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INSPIRED
MASS
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Location: Milky Way / Ninmah Cluster / Maskim Xul system
Date: 2169 (14 months later)

Guns - 5
Mathematics - 12
Engineering - 6
Chemistry - 5
Biology - 6
Biological Engineering - 4
Computer Programming - 11
Mass Effect: Technology - 5
Mass Effect: Quarian Enviro-suits - 3
HALO: Shields - 3
Star Trek: Replicator - 1
Civilization Beyond Earth: Molecular Forge - 2

One of the things about living on the Migrant Fleet that took me the longest to get used to is that we, well, migrate. We never really remained in one place for very long, for better or worse. We tended to move from system to system for all kinds of reasons. The most common, though, was mining. There were tons of easily acquired mineral deposits in the outer star systems - harder to reach locations that most species ignores once they have access to eezo and can build ships to other systems and easily mined planets with atmospheres. Picked through dead system as best we could without blasting large rocks open or putting down the roots of a real mining operation? Time to move on.

Next stop was always to park off into deep space between stars and refine the resources into something we can use or sell. If we didn't, there were 'mining groups', little more than glorified bandits, that would try to pick off the mining ships. Or they'd claim we'd been mining their fields -we stayed away from officially owned areas, the admirals were careful- and if we didn't turn over all our ore they'd get the authorities involved.

Authorities that'd always side with their own race, who'd spend their ill-gotten goods in the local economies, instead of the migrant fleet.

But that's why we couldn't stay and mine an unclaimed system, and then a month in the dark, away from any star refining it into usable goods. Then we spend a month selling those goods and our services over a populated planet. Peddling rebuilt drive cores we don't have the element zero to use, but that we knew others would drop everything that they have to trade us for it. The rest of this fucking galaxy likes to turn their nose up at us, spit at us and make jokes about how we're "suit rats," but they always quickly changed their tune when we showed up with high-quality components ready to be plugged into their ships.

It was good money, but half of it was always taken in 'taxes' and 'fees', and other glorified bribes that would be made up on the spot. Long history had shown that fighting the corrupt officials -and there were always corrupt officials-, that being more knowledgeable in local laws then they were, just made things worse. Ultimately, enough funds were gathered to keep going, and some money was better than none at all. Despite the Fleet's best attempts, hydroponics and reconstitutors only got us so far, and, without farmland, the Fleet was dependent on the Turians to grow the Dextro crops we needed.

The month we spend in orbit usually lasted until one wise-ass tried to steal from us, despite the protection fees we'd paid, then they'd bitch to the local government about 'Quarian's trying to rob from them'. They'd get ignored, until someone decided that we were out of things to sell, even though we always had more, and then suddenly they'd 'discover' these 'serious charges' against us. Next thing we know we are being 'invited' to leave their system. Sometimes they'd sit back and watch us leave, sometimes we'd be escorted from the system by Turians, just hoping to have a reason to shoot at us for one reason or another.

Again and again the cycle repeated. Ironically enough. All told it takes about four months for the Fleet to strip the purest of rocks, less than five percent of what was available, nowhere near the kind of harvesting of an entire star system that the less intelligent races like to claim. Another month for the processing of ore into metals and ice into drinkable water, topping off tanks to avoid ruinous fluid prices, and then we make our way to another populated planet to trade for, at most, a month, and only to be spat on and kicked out again.

Twice a year. That is how often we visit colonized worlds, and get screamed at for it. Having lived through it twice now, I can officially say I'm not a fan. The Fiwa, fortunately, isn't a trade ship. Nor are we part of the Heavy Fleet under that idiot, Admiral Han'Gerrel. We might be overly armed and armored for the job, but the Fiwa is a simple civilian ship best suited to making external starship repairs. Normally on our own, but occasionally on other ships, though thankfully doing so in the black meant the aliens left us the hell alone, as we were usually out of sight, out of mind.

It was a job that we did very well, as it turns out. So well in fact, that Captain Lona'Raanar vas Fiwa ordered the more experienced members of the crew to take a step back and let us younger people on the ship make the repairs to non-Quarian vessels when we are parked somewhere. Joy. On the one hand, it gave all of us 'youths' some valuable practical experience doing the job for when we left for our Pilgrimages. At the same time it meant the other races aren't getting our best work. It's still cheaper than getting repairs done in one of the orbital or planetside docking stations for the most part, and we are still getting ripped off for the work we're doing, so most of us were of the mind of 'why worry about giving it our best for people who hate us?'

That all being said, the downside of living in the Migrant Fleet is that we are a Migrant Fleet. Hell, when we aren't working, we're moving. Double Hell, even when we're working we're moving. One thing that my memories made clear was that, on a starship, staying in one spot equaled death. Not moving usually meant there was something wrong with the engines, and if something was wrong with the engines then there is something wrong with your home.

I'd already seen it once. Shortly after coming through a relay one of the older ships in the Flotilla just suddenly listed to one side, inertia pushing it out of formation. The hope was something had just gotten out of alignment, or maybe they had missed a top off and run out of fuel, but it was eventually found to be a complete and total engine failure. Something that wasn't supposed to crack, cracked, and left four hundred people without a home. We had to evacuate the ship and assign the people to other vessels. Families remained together, but friends, neighbors, communities that had formed over time and across shared experiences, were divided up across the Fleet.

Everyone was still alive, and they could still communicate, but with the costs associated with shuttle use, and the size of the fleet, it would be months before they could see each other again, and then only briefly. Friends were only a few dozen miles away, but they might as well be in different countries.

It's something I didn't really think of when I played the games all those years ago. You see the massive fleet, and you meet interesting people, and they even tell you that the ships are overfilled with people, but you don't really understand what that means until you find yourself living on them, with them, as them.

Each ship has its own cultural identity. Villages one and all, trading with each other and working together in common cause, but independent and unique in their own ways. Most aliens tend to look at us and just see the suit, I know I did. The aliens would identify us as Quarian, and thus something to be looked upon like one does dung on their shoe, but to each of us we could look at another's suit and see their history. For example; my mothers belt has the symbol for the Fiwa placed prominently upon the buckle, telling anyone who knows that it is her home. Yet it went deeper than that. As you look higher on her suit, you see the lineage of each ship her family has served across. Before the Fiwa, she was a child of the Ceeworp, and its symbol is emblazoned on the clasp over her heart. Over her left shoulder rests the name of her father's ship; Yowan. Over her right, her mother's ship; Mahok. And then, her shawl, the pattern it holds telling you from what city her family originated from upon Rannoch; Rulun.

I understand, intellectually, that this sort of decoration predated the Fleet. It was a way to show pride and support for your family back on the homeworld by letting all know you are proudly a member of this community. Not unlike wearing a jersey of your favorite sports team. Only back then, it wasn't ship names but instead was names of local community districts and landmarks.

I also understand, intellectually, that it makes a very convenient way to track our history and keep our bloodlines forking. Need to prevent turning our genetic family trees from turning into palms, after all.

Emotionally, though, it just highlights the disconnect between my Human self and my Quarian history. Those symbols carry a weight to them that I can feel, but, at the same time, are also just mildly interesting. The longer I stayed here, immersed in the culture, the more I was settling into it. That wasn't bad, but I wasn't sure it was good either.

As I stood before the thin window separating me from the cold vacuum, I watched the stars holding steady in the distance. It was a strange thing, to know you were moving at thousands of kilometers per second, but not able to tell you were moving at all unless you were passing near enough to a celestial body to see it without the aid of a telescope.

I supposed that was why my mind was drifting, internally rambling about ships and moving around. Why I kept thinking of the four hundred people we had to kick out of their home before the Fiwa and her crew got to work dismantling the ship for spare parts and scrap. Why I thought of a community I helped kill.

I blinked as an alert chirped from my omnitool, and I watched as the HUD in my helmet informed me of an unread message. With a few specific eye movements and finger twitches, I managed to open my extranet and see what I had.

AndersonN7: Anything interesting out there?

That had me blinking owlishly for a moment, surprised, before I grinned and relaxed into a smile, glad to have something to focus on.

Zod: Just watching the stars go by. Everything alright? You don't normally contact me during the middle of your night.

As I settled in to wait for his reply, I thought back to some of the things I have done for the last year. For the first couple of months of my new Quarian life, I had attempted to find ways to help. I invested that single point into Star Trek replicators, only to find out that the Nadion radiation would be a bit of a problem with Mass Effect fields. An explosive kind of problem. The same fields that are everywhere in this universe. Ironically, if I was in a Star Trek universe instead, I could have found ways to harden any Mass Effect tech to play well with it. But with the roles reversed, I would need to find some way to harden every single drive core, omni-tool, kinetic barrier, and even mother fucking toothbrushes from nadion particles to prevent something horrific from happening.

On the one hand, I'm glad I've got an idea for anti-reaper tech now - because holy shit would a powerful enough phaser blow one to kingdom come. At the same time, the damn blowback from using that kind of weapon would result in any friendly ships nearby being hit as well, even the stray nadions enough to start a cascade.

So, I shifted my attention to finding other ways to help. Invested heavily in math because, well, everything uses math. Then I branched out into biology and chemistry, trying to make sure I cover all my bases and develop a very well rounded knowledge base.

Then I invested in coding, but didn't specify enough so I got knowledge of every type of coding. For the short term, it was a stunningly useless investment, but several points later it let me put together things that could not only interface, but exploit all of the disparate coding languages of the citadel races, as well as do my own in a way that was incredibly hard to hack, as it was in a language that didn't exist in this universe.

To put it mildly, I'm likely one of the best programmers in the fleet at this point, and only because the others have decades of experience and are hyperfocused on the Quarian programming language..

The good news? My intelligence was noticed, and in such a way that I was seen merely as an incredibly bright spark, instead of a, well, Spark. Captain Daro'xen vas Moreh has even messaged me and made it well known that she would be happy to have me join her research teams after the Pilgrimage.

The bad news is that I was still expected to take a Pilgrimage.

That wouldn't be so bad if I could've been setting myself up for success this last year, if I they could just drop me down somewhere mineral rich to set up shop with my tools and let me just make something, but, as I was informed, both by others and my own memories, that was not how this worked.

The Pilgrimage, as it turned out, was a religious practice as much as it was economic and scientific. I would be getting immunization implants, if the ones I'd already designed weren't already superior, I'd receive lessons on how to act outside of the fleet, which my human memories mostly already had covered, and I'd get basic weapons and armor, except, again, the gear I'd built myself was already superior.

Being outfitted like a knight errant, or an adventurer right of Dungeons & Dragons, was what I was allowed, along with a miniscule amount of credits, and absolutely nothing else. It was supposed to be a test of character and a growing experience, like the Amish Rumspringa, something that had been the cause of great amusement on my ship when I showed them how Humans, the new kids on the galactic block, had some cultural practices in common with us.

No, regardless of my abilities, no one was willing to provide me with resources that I needed for my experiments when I left in a little less than a year. I'd developed a method to get an additional forty-three percent efficiently out of our ship's life support systems -forty-three percent!- and I was still told I'd have to start off just the same as all the others. Maybe if they'd built and tested it, they might've been swayed, but even with the blueprints drawn up for them and handed in, no one has been willing to risk testing a system that works with one that is "experimental." They set it aside in the meantime to install in any new ship or shuttle we pick up in the future.

Whenever that would be.

I mean, I got where they were coming from, I didn't want to risk people's lives in case it doesn't work, but damn was it discouraging to see weeks of hard work ignored, the 'experts' barely giving it a glance. Knowing what'd come if I tried something else mechanica, I'd recently started work on a bacteria that would fill the missing gaps in our immune systems created by leaving Rannoch, which should give us what we need to leave our suits.

Originally I wanted some kind of implant, like the one that enhanced our immune system on steroids, but that wouldn't work, and the Quarians were surprisingly anti-gene modding, wanting to 'stay Quarian', as they were when they left Rannoch, rather than adapt. After doing a frankly ridiculous amount of research, I finally came to the conclusion that Quarian biology was such that it needed an exterior component to be consumed to be fully activated. I imagined it would end up being something like yogurt. Something we would have to occasionally eat to make sure everything kept running, and give extra to when someone gets a cold, but even relying on an external resource, one that could be withheld, would be preferable to staying in our suits forever.

Sadly, I don't think I'll ever be able to make it while I'm in the Fleet, as the kind of clean-lab I'd need is reserved for 'experienced' scientists, without having gone on Pilgrimage, I'm not considered an adult. In that same vein, they wouldn't let me make modifications to weapons, or any physical changes to my suit past that which falls in line with what came before. That said, they had no issue with the programming changes I made to make our HUD more effective and user friendly, as there was no physical cost to letting me do so. Changes most on my ship were quick to adopt as well, spreading slowly throughout the fleet, so maybe there is some hope I'd get more traction with time.

AndersonN7: Not much. Just about to turn in when I saw I got another letter from you. Thought I would see how you were doing and if things had improved any. You holding up?

I offered a heart-felt smile at that. One of the first things I had done when I realized when and where I was, was to reach out to humans in the extranet chats. I knew it was silly, but I didn't feel quite so alone in those early days when I had a few people to chat with, the Quarians just so, well, Alien, even if I had grafted-on memories of how to act. Although, to be fair, as time went on I seemed to have drifted from thinking of Humans as my people and instead moved to thinking of them as potential allies. Ma and Pops were always there, distant but still making sure to see me every few days, and with so many people crammed into a ship meant to only hold a small fraction of them, community ties built quickly, even if I was even more awkward around them than most Quarian teens.

So, once I wasn't feeling so isolated and had gotten over the shock of my new circumstances, the lack of any emergency having only given me time to start to spiral into melancholy and loss over the people I likely would never see again, I started to think. And plan. And invent.

One of those plans was to make contacts among the key people I remembered from Mass Effect. While I hadn't heard anything back from Dr. T'Soni, and likely never would, given I was a random Quarian while she was an academic, and more than that the daughter of a renowned and well connected Matriarch, I did manage to get in contact with many humans. While some of them like Shepard or Joker would be around the same age I currently am, and also never responded to my blind messages, I was able to use the excuse of "following the human custom of pen-pals" to make contact with David Anderson and Steven Hackett.

The fact that they replied to me at all was surprising, as they were both men with military careers, but I had a feeling that their willingness to talk to me had more reasons than just personal ones. I was under no illusions about the fact that all of our conversations were likely forwarded to Navy Intelligence, after finding out that the Humans, officially, had very little knowledge of Quarians, the Fleet having never reached out to the Systems Alliance for aid.

They were sure that, given the SA had signed up with the other Citadel races, they'd treat us similarly. While I wanted to believe we- no, they wouldn't, I couldn't be sure. And, even if I could be sure, I had no pull with the admiralty, to head in the direction of a Human colony, even as a 'test run'.

While Hackett was friendly enough, although brief in his responses, David was both friendly and curious. While a lot of humans have questions about the Quarians, and why the Citadel seems to treat us like vermin instead of an intelligent species in need of aid like we are, David asked instead for specifics on how we lived, what we did to survive, how we were treated, and more. I wondered if that mindset comes from his old girlfriend, Kahlee.

He talked about her whenever he gets a chance, even though it sounded like they don't see each other very often. Somehow we'd managed to bond, though I guessed it's mostly because he isn't aware of how young I technically am, and the fact I could write in english without the need of translator programs. While they were good, they sometimes mangled Quarian words or phrases in a way that they just didn't for most of the other races.

If I were the suspicious sort, I might believe that such problems were intentional, making us seem less intelligent then we actually were, but would the Salarian programmers who developed that tech do that on purpose?

Yes. The answer was yes.

One of my projects was a Worm that'd infect the translation systems and fix the Quarian language issues, though keeping the accents the translators gave us, while upping the pitch of Turian voices to make it more bird-like, make the Asari hiss, and insert the occasional croak into the Solarians that was normally impeccably edited out. It would, after all, just keep the languages more 'accurate', which was the Salarian's excuse for keeping our language in Khelish instead of translating the fairly straightforward terms.

Zod: I'm doing better. I think I'm finally getting over it, I guess. It's not fair, but it is what it is.

"It" being credits I had to give back to some stupid Volus that'd swindled me. Since programming didn't require me to physically be in the system, I'd put out job offers on the extranet as a freelance programmer. I'd actually been making a fair amount of credits doing it as well, more than enough to fund my upgrades while passing along enough to the fleet to not be seen as 'greedy'. A few people just stiffed me, enough to the point that I'd started to consider putting backdoors into my creations despite the immorality of doing so, but more often than not the people making the requests were happy to have someone else figure out the solution to problems that had been driving them nuts for weeks or months on end.

Then I met Uon of Clan Tox. He sent me a problem, I fixed it, and then he paid me. Good job, right? Then he found I was Quarian, as, in retrospect, asking the funds to be transferred to the Migrant Fleet was a mistake, so he tried to sue me for twenty times the cost of the job by claiming the fix didn't work. As a Quarian, of course my work was substandard, or so the cultural zeitgeist declared, so I had law enforcement contacting me, with threats of bounties on my head. I'd asked to see it again, so I could see how it wasn't working, and then he tried to claim I was attempting to steal intellectual property that I made, and threatened further legal action.

The only way to get the fuckhead to shut up was to wire him back his money, as well as sending a copy of our correspondence to all of the various banking clans. Then the dick sent me a fucking 'pleasure to do business' message, which got forwarded as well, including to the previously mentioned LE officials, who replied with something that boiled down to 'You should be thankful the Volus isn't pressing charges, suit rat.'

Just another day in the Migrant Fleet.

Why did I want to stop the Reapers again?

Right, they'd kill us too. And the Humans.

Zod: Just wish I had been able to keep the credits. It was almost triple what I usually earn on such a job.

AndersonN7: And that is why you should never have taken it. When something looks too good, there is usually a reason.

Zod: Yeah, yeah. Live and learn. I've never been a paid on commission worker before.

AndersonN7: That's why I work for the SA Navy. Never missed a payday.

Zod: Laugh it up smart-ass. Maybe you can instead tell me what you've been up to. I know, I know, you can't tell me where you are or what your ship is up to, but you can at least tell me about the foods you've eaten and media you've seen. We've been in the dark for weeks, and you know how tight the bandwidth is.

While we weren't exactly cut off, out here as we refined ores, connecting to the extranet cost money. Text like this was negligible, but video feeds cost money, and anything more complex turned my savings into swiss cheese. Hell, part of the reason my code was so 'elegant', as one customer had described it, was that I lost profit if it got too dense, if I didn't want to wait for the bi-yearly window when we were, if not planetside, then planet-adjacent.

AndersonN7: ha! I will laugh it up, thank you very much.

'Yeah, you keep laughing. All that investment into Mathematics included Economics as well. By the time you retire, I'm going to make small countries look like paupers,' I promised myself with not some small amount of amusement.

Then I frowned as I gave serious consideration to my future plans. 'Then again, I'm going to need to invest in companies for that. So, start with credits in my accounts, then to galactic stock investment, then to direct company investments and ownerships. Should only take...a decade or so. And I'm sure there won't be any blow back from a Quarian suddenly not being a credit-less drifter. Fuck that is way too high profile.'

And that wasn't counting, the, you know, army of genocidal robots on their way to kill us all.

AndersonN7: Things have been fairly normal here. And I can't imagine hearing about my eggs and hashbrowns would be all that interesting for you.

Zod: when all you eat comes in a tube, any food descriptions are interesting. You know what the worst thing to have been unleashed upon this Fleet was? Human television and it's obsession with cooking shows and programs about who can cook the best. I know of four ships where the extranet has censors put in place to block them.

Zod: you have unleashed a curse upon us! A curse I say! Those programs are addictive!

AndersonN7: Oh don't be so dramatic. I'm sure your people will find a solution to that some day. Maybe those shows will just be the motivation you need to find it.

Zod: I don't doubt that at all. Did you know that part of the reason we are interested in those programs is because your food is partly compatible with ours? Most of your food stuffs have both chirality instead of the usual one or the other that other races food-stuffs are made of.

Which was a weird thing to find out. The reason everyone in the galaxy believes that humans eat levo-proteins is because that is what the Turians decided. They were more sensitive to the dextro/levo chirality than the other races and decided they couldn't take the risk with human food. So the Council gave Humans the levo designation even though they produce and consume both. And that was the story told to everyone else.

The Citadel Council misleading people to better serve themselves? Perish the thought!

Zod: frankly, I look forward to eating an egg. Fried egg. With salsa and bacon.

AndersonN7: you ever get out of that suit, and I'll buy your first meal. Hell, I'll buy all your meals for a month.

Zod: deal. I'm never turning down a bet involving free food.

AndersonN7: Me either. But that just means you'll owe me some meals when you do. I'd like to find out what Quarian food tastes like.

Zod: Can't guarantee you will like it, but you've a deal. Now get to bed. It's late for you, Mr. XO.

AndersonN7: good night, Zod.

[CONNECTION TERMINATED]

As I closed the chat program, I nodded to myself, sighing as I felt the next point slide into place, dropping it directly into Biological Engineering. Riding the wave of information, which built on both itself and the research I'd done myself, an issue that'd stymied me all week solved itself.

'No, not one product, two.' I decided. Trying to do it all at once wouldn't work, because the various aspects would catalyze with each other, which was likely why those that'd tried to do it before me had given up, though, because they'd failed, they'd not shared their notes. But by splitting it up, I was still trying to condense an entire alien ecosystem into a tiny supplement, but I could let the non-combinable aspects stay away from each other without denaturing them almost to the point of uselessness. I even knew which things could go with what, though without a lab, and some more experience, the entire thing was still theoretical.

Despite myself, a smile stretched across my features at the thought of meeting Anderson, face to face. 'You're on. I wasn't joking about those damn eggs.'