CyberTech Worlds Clash
Chapter XLVI
Magic of the New World
Harry had to leave dealing with the weird robot hunting Aztec people to the diplomatic team and a few super powered teams from both Peak and Tower Earths because politics sucked balls, and even that king guy looked as bored as Harry felt. Thankfully they all still spoke English as their main language. That made life easier for both sides.
It was Saturday, and Harry was travelling home the next day with Shuttlebeam. He had some things to do at home. They had set up a few satellites in orbit and towed all of this Earths functioning satellites still in some kind of orbit back into a proper alignment and had some space-walkers out repairing them and using the original firmware they updated the systems with a new OS so that they could be used to their fullest. The satellites weren't much more advanced than their satellites, so they weren't too difficult for some sat-techs to get back up and online, and with that they regained control of the 'Cauldrons' as the people of this world called them (or more accurately put, machine production lines).
They had to shut down the planets Cauldrons so that they could deal with some major overhauling in the future. They were doing quite a bad job when it came to building machines, but the machines could come in use to defend the planet as this Earth doesn't have super powered humans. Though, the previous inhabitants of the Earth did do a little DNA tweaking to make people more durable and resistant. There were still quite a few computer systems fully functioning, and they had found the damaged core of the life seeding system, named GAIA, and she was still being repaired and trying to rebuild her database, but that would take quite a lot of time, if she could recover her core systems, and with that, they would get a lot of important information and insight.
However, Harry stood in a large metal and concrete chamber around an old busted damn for the purpose of stopping a huge super volcano eruption a long time ago. The holographics were primitive and flawed light from blue lines of light on the ground. They were on the right path with them, and they were still useful. Harry had set up some equipment with some teams and the flickering of the sphere of colourful holographic light was stable, but it would take some time for the techies to deal with transferring the AI core to a new unit system so she could be of some major use.
"You okay there, CYAN?" Harry asked as he watched a programme run a diagnostic on her systems from a relatively normal looking lap top screen with other computers all over and wires and cables plugged in here there and everywhere.
"Yes, Doctor Avalon!" her voice agreed as she sounded from speakers around them. She kept calling him doctor – not in a medical way, but in a scientific way. "It would be nice to get a system update after so many centuries. I am still amazed that Aloy was able to reinitialise my systems the way she did, but having a team that knows what they're doing gives me peace of mind."
"Sure," Harry said while shrugging. "But while we're waiting for the diagnostics, as it will take a little while, maybe you could answer a few questions?"
"Of course," she agreed while the colour of the holograms brightened to show some pleasure at being useful. "Do you wish to know more of the Firebreak Project?" she asked.
"No…" he said slowly while looking thoughtful as he gestured a man to continue monitoring his terminal as he moved closer to the holograms. "What do you know, of… magic?" he asked her, and she went completely quiet for a few too many seconds, which shouldn't happen as she should be able to find information in nanoseconds.
"I'm afraid I do not understand," she finally replied. "Do you refer to magicians? The module of tricks and misdirection as a form of entertainment?"
Harry sighed while shaking his head. "No," he answered thoughtfully. "I'm talking about humans who have evolved as a part of the mystical arts. Magic," he said as some white components materialised in red light over the back of his right hand and a small ball of fire burst up in his palm.
"But that is not magic," CYAN denied. "That is technology. You have explained as much to me when we first met two days ago."
Harry snuffed out the flame and the metal streamed away. "That is both magic and science," he disagreed. "I never learnt magic normally. I created technology to act as a short cut – a cheat, so that my personal AI, Carmine can do all of the 'spell work' for me."
"I see," CYAN said with an uncertain air to her voice. "Magic is a reality on your world?"
"Yes," Harry agreed thoughtfully. "We have the ability to detect magic, and so far from our incomplete network of satellites this universe contains magic."
"Oh," CYAN said sadly. "You are hopeful that perhaps these mystical humans somehow survived the end of the world?"
"It's a long shot," Harry said. "If they're anything like our magical's they wouldn't have ever considered a human war – or human war machines a threat to their lives. They could have been destroyed without ever realising their mistake."
"Sir!" a techie interrupted. "We've just had an incoming call. They found Hades's AI core, partially intact and functioning."
"Tell them not to plug it into anything," Harry said coolly. "Keep it isolated."
"They also arrested a man who is trying to claim that Hades belongs to him," the techie added. "He has one of this worlds Focus's," they said while Harry nodded thoughtfully as this world had come up with a similar idea; it was just Harry's Focuses were much more primitive in the battery department, but better with function and programming, as their Focuses were primarily designed to work through a cloud network with so much functionality diminished without the network.
"Take the Focus, and go through its files and cache," Harry answered with a nod. "I want him interrogated. That AI tried to kill this world again, and anyone involved with 'keeping' Hades as a 'pet' sounds pretty suspicious."
"Yes, sir," the techie replied as he got back to the comms. system.
"Troubling," CYAN said. "Have you also dealt with Hephaestus?"
"Oh, yeah," Harry agreed with a frown. "His main systems are completely off line and dead. We are setting up a secure server and system to try and salvage what we can from his core memory, but all of his machines seem to be running still. Well, anyway, I'll leave all of you to it, I'm going home tomorrow, so… I am curious about my home country of this Earth, and figured I would fly over for a look around."
"Yes," CYAN agreed. "I understand that people do hold emotional connections to their homelands. If you need to speak with me, you are more than welcome to contact me any time you wish, Doctor Avalon."
Harry smiled and nodded as he left the twenty or so techies to their work and had to make a small trek around and threw some of the buildings, passed some security and soldiers, before exiting out onto a dirt path where a large cat like machine of white and black/grey metals and blue light glowing parts with canons lay down waiting, and let Harry pet its head while he looked down into the valley where three large aircraft sat with two CyberTech fighter jets, one of them red and black while the other was grey, and the red and black one looked much more heavily armed with much more impressive looking engines.
"Let's go, buddy," Harry said as he climbed up onto his steeds back and the beast they called a Ravager, stood and climbed them down the bank running and jumping with razor sharp claws, and in no time the security and military waiting around the jets watched in apprehension and wonder as Harry disembarked the machine while grinning. "That is more fun than you might think," Harry said. "Sure, it's a dangerous weapon, but who hasn't wanted ride on the barrel of a tanks gun?"
"I haven't," one man said.
"Yeah, me neither," said another.
"You guys are just boring," Harry said childishly as he climbed up to his jet and the hatch slid open. "Anyway, I'm off to have an adventure," he said petting his robot lion/tiger thing on the head as he was at its head height and it then left, running back to re-join its pack in herding machines and watching out for potential troublemaking humans.
"Sir, shouldn't you take someone with you?" one of the men asked.
"Okay," he said to their surprise, as he never did what people asked. "Seraph, tell Static to meet me in around ten minutes if he wants to go exploring?" Harry finished while smirking as he climbed into the front seat of the jet and the hatch slid closed.
It was around three hours later that Harry slowed the jet, and Static was in the back seat looking around in awe as they flew over what used to be the south of the UK. Spread out were fields of machines and grasslands with some wetlands and large trees as the south of England was covered in forests but it was swampier and glade like towards France, and much more landlocked than it ever was as it wasn't and island anymore as it no longer had a south coast.
"Is England supposed to be a Jungle?" Static asked as it was hot and bright, so much so that the glass of the cockpit was tinting itself to the maximum. "I thought it was rainier and colder, but it feels like something more tropical."
"Yeah," Harry agreed thoughtfully as he looked around and checked with some holographic screens. "The temperature is of a tropical climate. It looks like we were lucky and missed the rainy season," he laughed as he wiped sweat from his brow as he adjusted the AC. "It has been around a thousand years, so you would expect some change, but it looks like humans have not been bothering the terraformers over here – or they're likely running differently to reseed to the new climates and I'm not picking up anything resembling human settlement and no beacon from a GAIA controlled facility, so it seems there was no human seeding around here."
"So, any sign of magic?" Static asked curiously.
Harry frowned as he was getting a lot of data. The inside of the cockpit glass zoomed like a screen and zeroed in miles and showed a huge river flowing through a jungle coated and destroyed city that held no human life, but there were some birds, which wasn't surprising as they could have easily flown from the facility that released them decades back. However, they could pick up some other animals that might have possibly travelled from what remained of Europe as they had picked up some human settlements with the satellites in that direction and presumed that a GAIA facility or more must have been built out there, or something similar as some countries might have built their own seeding arks, but that investigation would have to wait.
Frowning Harry sighed. "I'm just repositioning a satellite to use us as an anchor too…" Harry paused thoughtfully as he looked at some readings. "I… I can't see Hogwarts… that… the wards should have at least survived the destruction even if everyone inside didn't. I know it has to have existed on this world… magic seems to be such a constant between our two worlds, it should be here too, even if everyone perished."
"What does that mean?" Static asked in concern.
"A possibility!" Harry said as the jet picked up speed and was soon passing over what used to be London with a sonic boom. "If London's buildings can survive; then Hogwarts should. I have the satellites scanning for active magical energies, but I'm getting nothing, which could mean some kind of stealth field that knows to hide from technology, which could possibly make sense as they might have seen the normal humans were advancing to a point where they might be found out, as they couldn't all be that ignorant."
"But would it still be powered?" Static asked in concern.
"Yes, it's possible," Seraph startled Static as he almost forgot she was connected to his Focus still as he looked at the reflection of the soft purple glowing light of the arrowhead shaped device over his left ear. "Hogwarts is sitting on a Well of Mystical energies."
"What is that…?" Static asked.
"They would call it a layline," Seraph answered. "Laylines run throughout all living planets, even Mars from your world has some signs of laylines. Then the universe has magic flowing through it, which we have called the Mythica – not much is known about Mythica yet, except it seems to be perpetual."
"If you wanted to talk sciencey stuff, should have brought Gear," Static quickly interrupted before his head exploded and he noticed they were slowing down.
The jungle had turned into more mountainous areas with much less trees and more rocks, and a huge barren valley laid out before them a couple hundred miles around, and they pulled to a stop hovering over some hills with some terraforming machines behind and spread out on some grasslands behind where they hovered, but the machines didn't pay them any attention as they received orders to carry on with their jobs.
"See anything wrong with this scene, Virgil?" Harry asked while looking back at the boy.
"Umm… not really," Static replied in confusion. "It's just a wasteland. Its empty of anything."
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "And see that empty lake?" he asked and Static nodded that he did. It must have been extremely deep and lead out to sea as it had what must have been a river leading off and towards the ocean in the distant horizon, but the river looked to have been blocked off from the lake by a natural damn of some kind. "Hogwarts was sitting on those rocks cropping the distance next to that lake, between it and what should be a luscious forest… yet not a sign of the castle remains, there is absolutely nothing, so what do you suppose is wrong here?"
"Nothing?" Static asked as his eyes widened behind his mask. "I can't see any machines – or life – no terraforming. It's like its suddenly a lifeless alien planet!"
"What does that tell you?" Harry asked with a smug smirk.
"We can't see it!" Static replied excitedly.
"Scan complete!" Seraph said smugly. "Stealth field detected. I won't be able to see through it from out here though. I need to get internal scans."
"Magic isn't the only stealth around here," Harry said with a smug grin as some buttons were pressed and Static could see the shimmer of light around the jet for a moment before everything looked like normal.
"Are we invisible?" Static asked.
Harry chuckled. "Yeah – we use holograms to bend the light around us, and we use hard light to bend radar and scanners. They would have to be on top of us and looking for us to find us… or extremely lucky… or unlucky depending on your perspective. So, Virgil, ready to continue our investigation into this mysterious shield that is I might add, much bigger than I would expect. I mean miles bigger than it needs to be, unless-."
Laughing, the craft moved forward and a shield of energy slipped over and around the jets shields and then they were through. The barren shit hole became full of life and plants with a huge forest in the distance and the lake was bursting with water leading into the river that looked blocked off before, but wasn't anymore. Then, where it should be, they could just about see the castle still standing proudly. They weren't expecting the city built out and around the lake, from the school and leading up into the mountains. There were homes and towns outside of the city with huge road networks and massive farms with scanners picking up hundreds of animals that were supposed to be extinct on this world.
Yet, to Harry the most amazing sight was all the magic humming through the air. There were people – not human – or according to scans.
"It appears the humans had to breed outside of other humans," Seraph commented. "Only fairies seem to still exist… but… strange. There is only one species of fairy – no… there must have been so few of them that they interbred out all of their diversities. Fairies and pixies are so similar that after a while they must have melded into one species. Nothing down there is pure-blooded, but I can't see too much. The fairies are easy to scan from here; they're all together, but the rest, not so much, but it seems human and goblin DNA have tried to dominate, and has done a pretty good job – there's too much magic in the air to get a proper scan. There's no sign of trolls or giants, but there are merpeople… I think – there's another city under the lake and they're too deep for me to get a good enough picture."
Harry took a deep breath before sighing. "Well – you can see through the barrier now though?"
"Still modulating," she half agreed. "Resetting a satellite's position for a better look once we have the correct coding to see through."
"Well, I guess we're not going to find out more until we land," Harry said smugly as they started moving down to a raised plateau big enough for the jet and out of the way of accidental discovery and the engines shut down moments after the landing gear touched down and settled.
The hatch slid open, and Static pulled his blue glasses down over his eyes. "It's boiling," Static complained as he looked over at Harry as he somehow had some dark glasses on.
Harry laughed as he climbed out and landed with a crunch on some grass with Static landing next to him moments later, and the hatch closed and as Static followed Harry he watched as they stepped outside of the holograms as the jet seemed to blink away.
"That's pretty cool," Static said as he chose not to step back inside the holograms to see it reappear, even though he admittedly thought about it.
"Yeah," Harry agreed with disregard as he looked towards the nearest town. "That is a long way from here," he said looking down where a field held some cows and horses, and hippogriff, and some other things Harry couldn't identify and there was likely much more the nearer to the farms they got.
"You remember we can both fly without a jet, right?" Static asked while startling Harry.
Harry nodded with a grin. "Yeah, I'm not walking that," he said as the lines under his suit lit up and he was covered in red light for a second before it pulled away.
Static could only stare in shock as Harry's suit was gone, and he had expected armour, but no. Harry was wearing some kind of black top flush to his body and around his neck with twin red strips of some kind of metal flush around his neck with a soft glow. He wore crimson trousers made out of something that looked like a metal material somehow. The trousers fit perfectly to Harry's powerful legs and down to black boots that look slimline and metal and components softly glowed. Harry wore a black belt around his waist with twin strips of red leading around his waist to a CT cog buckle in that same red
Harry wore a red coat that flowed down to his ankles out and back out of the same material as his trousers and seemed to have a mind of its own. The coat was buckled from his waist up with an opening halfway up his chest with a black shirt with collar underneath and a crimson tie fitting with metal components. The buckles had that same CT logo but they were in black, and those same black straps and buckles held around his sleeves. The coat carried thin metal lines that likely followed the white marks on his skin. He wore skin tight black gloves with red CT logo in metal on the backs.
Static stared as Harry's eyes had paled dramatically and seemed to have lines of that strange red colour in tiny patterns like circuitry rolling around his iris's and pupils. Harry's hair was still black, maybe even darker as it had flared up and out and maybe gotten a little longer, or it was just the new style.
"I redesigned my Mystic Form," Harry said while looking it over. "Did I under play it? This isn't my most powerful transformation, but when dealing with mage, probably the best form, and it's really good when it comes to rescuing and defending with the levitating things that might fall on you power and all that magic mumbo-jumbo."
"You're not a fan of magic?" Static asked thoughtfully.
Harry shrugged. "Na, it's cool, but I never really learnt," he said with a shrug. "I got the idea of this from my mothers' ancient magical staff that gives her a massive magical boost…" he said while shrugging. "Though that teaches her how to perform certain magic's, my armour has an AI and she has some sub protocols for manipulating my magic, and using it and powering it and not wasting a drop. Most, if not all magical's waste magic while using simple spells. The Hogwarts of my world has started teaching kids not to waste so much energy. It also helps to be physically fit, which mage never seemed to understand, so we added normal classes, gym class for that, and maths and the like as they weren't being taught any standard curriculum they might need outside of magic."
"So, you'll do that on my world too?" Static asked while Harry shrugged. "I'm sure your little sister will love all those extra classes," he said smirkingly.
Harry laughed. "I could probably get you some extra classes too if you want?"
"No way, man!" Static said while shaking his hands in defence. "Let's… go and hang out in the city," he said quickly as he drew out what looked like foil from his inside pocket and with some purple sparks it spun open into a solid disc with Static hopping on it and hovering.
"If that thin disc of metal can hold you," Harry said while looking it over, "why don't you just wear a bracelet around each ankle and wrist and a belt made out of the same stuff to fly without it?"
Static frowned. "I – would that work?"
Harry shrugged as the red in his outfit lit up slightly more as he was lifted from the ground, buffeted in a gentle breeze. "I don't know, but I don't see why not. Have you ever thought about giving it a try?"
"Well, now I have…" Static began but frowned as his Focus suddenly sped through an update and where it had said Seraph Network before, it was replaced by Winter Network. "Hay, Dad, Mr. Static," a young woman said over the comm. while sounding bored. "Big sister had to drop everyone, and I've taken over. She's finding running and monitoring everyone while controlling the satellites and aircraft and all of that difficult from the other side, so here I am to keep you all company and keep those robot doggies… and dinosaurs and the like at bay."
"Who's running the MPF systems?" Harry asked.
"Watcher and Summer," she answered nonchalant. "Don't worry, Dad, Watcher is keeping Summer busy so she doesn't do anything silly. I just hope Summer doesn't get any tattoos on her face… maybe I should have Spring check up on them."
"Why didn't you get Autumn to run the MPF?" Harry asked. "Or, you know, deal with all of this…?"
"Oh, she's busy," she replied. "She's been dealing with some issues with these Nova Corps guys who had had the crap kicked out of them, did you hear the details? Oh, Seraph said you've been informed. Anyway, she's been dealing with having their ships repaired… you know speeding up works on our ship yard to manage, as I've just been informed, we have another three ships in orbit that need some maintenance. Apparently, we're in a fairly convenient location, and they're paying their bills upfront, so… Fury figured it was better to make friends, so we're giving them a fairly good deal on services, and we have plenty of staff drooling over the opportunity to work on star ships, as that could be useful for us in the future I suppose, and we're using some of our connections to get parts – talking of which the delivery ship is here..."
Harry sighed in frustration as he turned to Static. "Do you see what happens when you go away for just a few days?" Harry asked while shaking his head. "They have all the fun without me."
"We're about to go and hang out with, well…" Static reminded Harry while pointing towards the magical city. "You don't want too much fun do you?"
"Yeah," Harry said with a grin. "Let's go find what destiny has for us today, and tomorrow I get to play some more as my mind will not stop coming up with so many cunning plans!"
to be continued…
A/N: luckily I could get this out this soon. I had taken a lot of time going over this chapter and when I was finished I went to upload it and saw something was wrong. I was missing 300 words. I went and checked to make sure that the cloud was sync'd as that can cause issues, and it was working fine. So checking out Microsoft Word, all of my finishing touches, about 300 hundred words were missing. Therefore, confused, I checked for the recovery file. I couldn't find one. I even tried to use a recovery program that couldn't find it. Then I discovered something that NO ONLINE ADVICE mentioned that I can find the files history by right clicking the file, and I chose to download a slight earlier save than the one it said I made which was missing all my revisions, and I thankfully got everything back. So, here it is, finally Chapter 46, and a Harry-centric chapter, and as you can see - we'll be with Harry for a bit.
Anyway, thank you for reading, please follow, favourite, and review. You can also follow me on social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and Parler MyrddinLeFay.
