Attack of the Doppleverse (Fruit and Libby)

[WeepingLiberty]

Humankind had always dreamed of walking amongst the stars, travelling to worlds far from their own, and coexisting with whatever life forms existed outside of the Solar System. It took a long time for them to get there, but eventually humans joined other life forms in the trek across the galaxy, and in turn the universe. Naturally, however, the universe they were born in wasn't enough for some, and thus the expedition for parallel universes had begun. So many set out in search of ways to cross but in the end no one got close, that is until recently. A breakthrough in gene studies has a certain scientist taking one step closer to finding other universes, a step that will prove to be difficult to make, for some planes do not wish to be found...

~~
Marcie stretched her arms out with a yawn before resting her chin in the palm of her left hand, staring out the window at the endless cosmos. Somewhere in the distance was a bright nebula, shining in hues of pink, blue and purple, a beautiful sight difficult to ignore. Despite its physical distance from her location, Marcie could see her self reaching out into the sea of black to run her hand through the light. She found herself wondering what it would feel like, if it would feel like anything all. The sound of footsteps ringing from the metallic floor pulled her from her daydream, a large smile crossing her face as her brother exited the sleeping quarters to join her. "Sleep well, Dustin?" She asked as she jumped up from her window seat, walking to join him in the middle of the room. He didn't say anything, but instead nodded his response, a usual gesture from the quiet man. Dustin was a normally quiet guy but especially so after first waking up, a trait that didn't seem to bother his over active sister.

The sound of another door opening pulled both siblings' attentions toward the woman who brought them on the trip in the first place. "I figured you'd be awake already." Kat smiled at the pair as she walked in, unaccompanied by the sound of footsteps. The scientist wasn't in the habit of wearing shoes if she could choose to go without them. She also didn't seem bothered by the natural chill of space, as she walked around in her traditional Jipsee garb.

"Early riser I guess you could say." Marcie shrugged and leaned against the nearby table, fingers wrapping around the edge of the furniture. "Anyway, you wouldn't happen to be back here to tell me that we're almost there would you?" Kat shook her head with a chuckle.

"Sorry, we still have a couple more days flight before we reach our destination. We are however halfway there so I guess in a way we are almost there. I figured that you'd be bored of sitting around doing nothing, though. I have to help out navigation with some minor problems but engineering is already expecting you. I'm sure they'll be pleased to have you two around. Relax and enjoy yourselves now because we have a lot of work to once we dock." Without saying anything else, Kat waved her hand and left the room through the door she entered. Marcie frowned and heaved a sigh.

"Engineering doesn't sound like much fun at all, but I guess it's better than nothing." Marcie exited the room with Dustin following close behind, his dark hair still sticking up in various directions. It wasn't necessarily a bad look for him, it didn't help to soften the rough exterior he often wore. It didn't take the energetic youth very long to find the engineering portion of the ship, letting herself in like she owned the place.

[Fruitsteak]

Greck sat with his feet atop his desk, occasionally sipping some beer. While he waits for his assistants to arrive, he reads over something on a monitor. After a few minutes, his wait is over. Marcie and Dustin enter.

“There you are! Name's Greck Neilson. I need you two to do some lifting for me while I fix something. If I name a tool, I want you to get it for me. There’s some thermal hoo-ha in the pipes that connect to the reactor, so we're going to make some adjustments," then he mumbles, "and it seems to be the only problem on the ship that I ever have to deal with."

"You'll need to put on these jumpsuits. This job can get messy."

He walks out, lazily waving his hand, gesturing them to follow. Greck starts grumbling as they walk, "you know what the problem with a ship like this is? It's too damn perfect. Once, I had a job aboard a Broadwing-490. Now THAT was a hunk of metal that just wasn't meant for space. The thing had to be fully staffed and maintained around the clock. This? Every couple of days, the pipes heat up in a funny way. Heat distribution! Why is this always an issue whenever Gigatek makes a reactor? Yeah! That's the only problem on this ship: a Gigatek reactor. Should've gone with a Stolten," his ramblings go on a little bit, until they reach the reactor, then they get to work. Greck gives concise orders, telling the twins which part to plug into which socket, and other things along those lines.

While working on some machinery, he casually asks, "so, what puts you two aboard?"

[WeepingLiberty]

It didn't take Greck any time at all to set the siblings to work, Marcie raising an eyebrow curiously as the man introduced himself and their job for the day. "Marcie, this is my brother Dustin." She pointed to the silent shadow behind her before stepping over to the jumpsuits hesitantly. They were large enough for them to slip on over the clothes they were already wearing, though the material was heavier than Marcie was used to.
Dressed and ready, Marcie and Dustin followed Greck out of the room, keeping pace fairly well. "Shouldn't you be happy that your job is so easy? Hard to mess things up if you don't have to fiddle with anything." She muttered as she knelt down to switch some plugs around. "Dustin and I are volunteers for Dr. Kat's study. I thought it would be an interesting to see what the frontier of science looked like. That and I figured Dustin needed some sibling bonding time." Marcie shrugged, brushing some loose strands of hair from her face.

"I didn't sign up for sibling bonding time. I signed up so I could look after your dumb ass." He growled, the first words either of them had heard all day. Dustin turned and walked some of the tools over to Greck, watching his sister out of the corner of his eye as he did so.
~~~

"Have you found the source yet?" Kat stood over the navigation screen, eyes flicking between the monitor and the front-facing windows.
"No Doctor, I apologize. Due to this interference, we're flying half-blind. We're unable to locate the source of the interference, however we suspect it may be a sudden electrical storm." The man behind the monitor looked up at the scientist, uncertainty written all over his face. Kat smiled in response.
"I'm sure you're hypothesis is correct, storms like those happen all the time. We can't plan for everything. Don't worry too much about it, focus on trying to restore our 'eyes', so to speak. I'll let you know if there is anything in coming that we should be worried about." She didn't let it show, but something felt off to her. The half-way point was where the ship was the most vulnerable, flying through open space with a decent amount of travel time left. It would have been the perfect time for pirates to attack the ship for whatever valuables were on board, or saboteurs to steal her work materials before she reached the lab. Turning to the other pilot, Kat made her decision. "Just in case of debris I want the shields up. We are carrying precious cargo, gentlemen, let's see that it arrives safely." Falling silent Kat turned to gaze out the window, allowing her mind to go blank.
~~~

Sora stomped through the ship without care of the noise she made. Her heeled boots clicked menacingly against the metallic flooring, echoing through the enclosed space. The woman had pale skin in comparison to her hair and the patches of scales across her body, her eyes given a fearsome look with the rings of red. At all times she had her wings pulled in close to her body, posture like that of a proud hunter, afraid of nothing that it may encounter. The sound of her footsteps rang closer and closer to where the three humans were working, her dreaded eyes peering around the corner expectantly. "You better be taking good care of these kids Greck. I find one scratch on their bodies and I'll hang you with your own innards." She hissed, seeing the pair of siblings working along side the maintenance man. As if to emphasize her point, she drew her favorite blade and pointed it the man threateningly. Sora turned as if to walk away but quickly spun back around to stare down the man. "I almost forgot why I came for a visit. Nav needs you to look into a slight hitch of the system." She tossed him her access card, already losing interest in her task. "I don't need to remind you to keep your nose out of places it doesn't belong, do I? That key will get you to the panels you need, I find out you've used it for anything else and I'll skin you alive. Now get back to work."

Marcie watched the Drakeon woman slink away, in awe of how cruel she sounded. "What did you do to get on her bad side?" She asked Greck, eyebrow raised with amusement.

[Fruitsteak]

"Happy that it's easy? Naw, that's not how I work. When you keep things easy, you get dull." Greck finished wrenching in a new pipe. Greck chuckled at the first thing that came out of Dustin's mouth. "So Marcie, ya wanna see the frontiers of science, huh? You've picked the right place. Not only are the folks in lab coats working on something big, but the ship we're fixin' is state of the art," he looks to the side, gazing at the next part in need of his work, and his voice lowers to a mumble, "except for the damn reactor."

Greck heard familiar footsteps from around the corner. He let out annoyed grunt. Sora arrived, stressing the safety of Marcie and Dustin. Responding to the threat of being hung from his innards, he let's out a muted, "sheesh!" Seeing the knife, he rolled his eyes. "Calm down, will ya? They'll be fine." He remained silent with a tired expression until she handed him the keycard, which he placed in his pocket. "Thanks." When Sora left, he let out a quiet, "ay, caramba!"

He responds to Marcie's question, "How'd I get on her bad side? Maybe she thinks there's only enough room on this ship for one asshole. Listen, I've got to go, so let's finish up. Dustin, make sure your sister doesn't get scratched. I want my innards intact" Within a few minutes, they finish the maintenance.

Greck went to his room. As per protocol, he was to log his maintenance activities. On his computer, he swiped an access card, but nothing happened. He swiped it two more times, looked down at the card, and realised he was swiping Sora's card. Switching it for his own, he got in and logged the work. Thinking, he looked at Sora's card, then the card reader attached to his computer.
Greck changed into a clean jump suit, rinsed his face and hands, and collected a set of tools that could be needed. From there, he headed towards the navigation room, and with a swipe of Sora's card, he made his way in.

[WeepingLiberty]

Marcie couldn't help herself, laughing at Greck's comment about the ship's reactor as well as his reaction to Sora's brief visit. "Well she certainly thinks she's better than you, but then again don't most of the crew? No offense but mechanic isn't on the top of the most desired jobs list." With a shrug Marcie turned back to her work, fascinated by the workings of the ship. She was almost sad that they had completed their work, almost being the key word. After separating from Greck, Marcie and Dustin went to clean themselves up, stretching out after having been bent over the maintenance work. "Well that was certainly refreshing." Marcie grinned, finding herself by another window. The pretty lights she had been admiring before were most likely behind them at this point, for she could no longer see them from where she sat. "Don't you wish they'd turn off the artificial gravity so we could float around? I mean it is the closest to flying as we'll ever get without assistive devices." Dustin exhaled with a chuckle.
"You have the most random thoughts sometimes, do you realize that? But I kind of get where you're coming from. It would be kind of neat to float around, but I think they need the gravity to focus on their work. They're just not as good at multi-tasking like us." The twins laughed as they sipped their warm tea, glancing out the window at the expansive beyond.
~~~

As the door slid open behind them, one of the navigators turned around in his chair to face Greck. "Oh good, you're finally here. I hope we didn't pull you away from anything, but we're having some issues diagnosing the problem." Standing from his seat he motioned for Greck to follow him, eyes glancing over at the doctor every few seconds. "A little while ago our radar went of the fritz. Kat's been working very hard to keep us on track but we need the thing up and running as soon as possible." He led Greck to a side room where the main panels were, tapping on the door with his hand. "All we need is to figure out the problem, hopefully it's something you can fix, otherwise..." The main trailed off, looking uncertain before he shook his head and smiled. "If you can't find anything wrong with the physical mechanics let us know, we might have to make a detour stop to replace the entire system. I doubt Kat will be very pleased to have such a massive delay in her studies." With a courteous nod, the man left Greck to his work, returning to his seat to continue his own system diagnostics.
~~~

Sitting in front of Kat's private quarters was the usually grumpy Sora, staring off into space in the most creepy manner possible. Arms folded across her chest, she leaned back against the wall for support. "I am a warrior not a baby sitter." She hissed under her breath, scowling at nothing. "So why do I have to keep watch over an inanimate object?" The thing that bothered her wasn't the not knowing what it was that she was currently assigned to protect but that it was such a boring job. It wasn't moving, nobody was attacking, and she didn't have any means of entertainment suitable to her tastes.

[Fruitsteak]

"I had to finish something that couldn't be left half-done. There would be damages. What's the issue?" Greck silently listened to the navigator, sometimes mirroring his glances toward Kat by accident. When the navigator finished, Greck simply responded with, "I'll start looking into it."

Greck ran the panel's diagnostic program. It claimed everything was working just fine: the panel, the radar, and the connection between them. Taking the panel apart, he couldn't see anything wrong with it. He troubleshot each component, but everything seemed in order. With the panel working and the diagnostic program giving a false positive, Greck figured manual inspection was in order. The problem was likely in the sensor array. Approaching the operator, he said, "I'm going to the pod bay to get up close to the radar."

Greck got in a pod that was equipped for exterior maintenance. Slowly flying to the array, he passed by the window Sora was looking out of. He found her expression a bit off-putting, but lazily waved to her anyway.

Greck made it to the array, and started controlling the pod arms to inspect the radar. Creating a direct connection between the radar and the pod's computer, he found that all the parts were properly configured. He ran every check. No diagnostic could explain this behavior, nor could any investigation give any hints. Greck let out a grown, upset about telling this to the navigator and the doctor.

Re-entering the navigational bridge, Greck stood himself close to the navigator, waiting for his attention. "I've got some bad news. I haven't found a reason for the issues. To look into it more, I'd need a team of engineers or a lot of time. The usual testing procedures aren't telling me there's anything wrong with the radar. These procedures are designed to look into every problem anybody had with the same model. If this happened to someone in the past, we'd have a fix," he pauses for a second, then starts trailing off a little, "either that, or nothing is wrong with it. It could be external interference. Though, the SDR-684 cancels that out pretty well. Hrm... Electrical storm could do it. Jamming would do it." He snaps back from his train of thought, "uh, not that we're being jammed! That's very unlikely." He clears his throat, and darts his eyes between the navigator and Kat, "Sorry if this causes any delays. Is there anything else you need me to do?"

[WeepingLiberty]

Sora raised her eyebrow and glanced disapprovingly at Greck as he floated by her window, blocking her only available view of the universe outside of the ship. The fact that he couldn't solve navigation's problem from within the ship gave her a bit of hope that all was well, but there was a familiar knot in her stomach that told her otherwise. Resting uneasily, Sora slouched backward and shut her eyes. Her body may have been resting but she was fully aware of everything around her, not even a speck of dust was going to go unnoticed.

~~~

The navigator looked up from his work to Greck hopefully, obviously having wished for a positive outcome to Greck's extensive search. The man's face fell as he heard the news, sighing heavily. He opened his mouth the speak, but Kat's voice rang back toward them before he could speak. "Always go with your gut, Mr. Neilson. More often than not its what saves your life." Her voice carried steadily, no noticeable changes in the pitch, as if she talking in her sleep. Opening her eyes, she smiled and turned to face the mechanic calmly. "The information you've given us has been very helpful, thank you. Unfortunately it will most likely mean delays, but the safety of the crew and passengers out weighs the need to be on time." Kat fell silent again, staring out at the course ahead of them.
Nodding, the navigator turned back toward Greck apologetically. "She won't admit it, but I'm pretty sure she's more upset about there being an unknown problem than the delay itself." He whispered with a chuckle. "Well, I guess that's it for us. I'll let you know if there is anything else, but I guess you can return to your normal duties for the time being." He waited until Greck had left the room before locking down the room. "You going to tell us what you're thinking, doctor?" Kat placed her hand against the freezing glass, allowing her mind to reach well beyond the ship, far into the space in which they were travelling.

"We've entered the edges of the star system, our destination lies on the opposite side of the star. Things can go wrong very quickly if we aren't careful." She fell silent in thought for a few moments before allowing her hand to drop from the glass. "I don't see anything within jamming range, but to be on the safe side, we'll land on the jungle moon Arkus 9. Wait there for a little while and see what happens before taking off again. Make no mistake, we're in no less danger now that we're this close. I want all defenses pushed to their maximum." As the crew got to work at their stations, Kat glanced out toward the gaseous planet whose moon they were going to land on, scanning the area for anything threatening. "Hopefully we can make it to Arkus 9." She mumbled under her breath,

[Fruitsteak]

Greck knocked on Sora's door and handed her card over. He blandly thanked her and left for his own room. Returning to his quarters, he took a seat at his desk, got a beer, then logged his activities. He paused for a while, thinking about the radar. It couldn't be jammed, could it? He thought it could. Though, jamming would imply somebody was doing it. Who? Why?

Most of the project on the ship was kept under wraps. Only the top scientists knew everything, while everybody else was only exposed to sections of the project. The big picture wasn't clear. Could it be something so important that somebody would want to sabotage it? Greck tried to dismiss the thought, but at the back of his mind, he was worried about the ship. He wanted to know more.

Greck had a secret: he was collecting information on the network from his computer. They were only tiny, encrypted fragments, but it was extremely unlikely he could be caught. His thought was that if he collected enough information over time, he could decrypt part of it and learn about the project. The idea of learning about cutting-edge tech was enough for him to get nosy. So far, he's needed more information to do anything. Then, he had an idea.

He looked through some logs on the computer, and the data on Sora's card was recorded from when he accidentally swiped it. Greck doubted the card had the credentials to access secret documents, but it was part of the network; it could be used to break the encryption. Even if his computer was removed from the network, he was confident he had everything he needed.

Heart pounding, he decided he was finally going to do it. Greck made several attempts to get something out of the pile of data he had. The information was ran through program after program, algorithm after algorithm, and crack after crack. Most of the data was junk, like so:

cHOq"ID:$xS0=Ucc():Uy>N~gi<YhQ*F\'%S.|&W*v=D\\WdY];G}S*;}fyA>E}qJ$O5Koo^*0>]Z~pl,=fs(r34)I_F!q#Xg]~Iw;

But finally, he made discoveries...

qFUq!0F+.y`Z*xg{L(AUt<lI>ILhz:{(Gi\'=s@~l6"+sTi=Kxj"h@?KHTcsSj`oREE(-_a."YEZJ>h%Ng#L?Ox.2;#L$Hb%can develop a gene toitMH.[(G36@=Nl\\4Ec2\\RlEypg%)k5hT3vq5({i+DU\\|o^lTb8af=|/jh{/Q%GZdment #3062, the Trans-Universal Resonance MutatiLS/3J9->2B(w4:!Y,t{<X@0KOW_Jw2`9CgYbx>4=v$;H;"::SwGF<~$8v:)m[%`MuZOha0_iHp,h59;T\'+k3Vs:Fv9&sf$i"#:Vy2%kmw0eN6h25PwW{B.&.D+2|"ll1(xI.AAmoG>R!`{R5?_H:Pd0\\6!\\y$, thus suggesting the existence of at least one paralXVz0e\\kS9R34-")_VyUo1+$>iVQsibilities of undiscovered societies in parallel universes leat]ie4FVWSU7gc4j,4M%F:?Famwc0,\\IDCJq|#sN0Y{rl1ea/hv}T>[]7Km{>/v3}E!w~F61^XPE8}TFw[%LqJrc/G[Ioi-vhT;h\']W9S0&"U@xPject phased out of thnA?@oz=$v9{nvdIVeGy88)3\']}#L"BqdD*AlHBW=u?Ko4JGd`YKr0)uMME^?r#XH-8*2B\\f_Y4.kn~\\Y!"C"\'h*?oFi["Tb|Ykg@C\'qiX[QM1{ko\\.OY@qx,5W

Greck was astonished, fearful, ecstatic, and eager to look for more. He was also tired, and decided to sleep.

[WeepingLiberty]

((Sorry, got bit by the inspiration bug))

The ship's captain approached the bow of the ship, stepping up next to the Jipsee scientist. He was about to say something to the woman when he noticed her blank stare out the window. It wasn't one of those daydream stares that most people got on long trips, instead Kat's eyes had gone completely blank, all facial expressions erased from her face. He took a step back, a chill running down his spine from the sight. Slowly Kat turned toward the right-hand side of the ship, staring at a spot on the opaque wall, her mind well beyond the confines of the vessel. He watched as a look of terror overcame the woman, rushing to the nearest monitor in hopes of finding whatever was freaking out the scientist. With nothing but static showing up on the nav screens, the Captain was forced to make a decision without any knowledge of what was happening just outside of his very own ship. Glancing back up at Kat, he watched as she raised her arm, pointing at the same spot on the Starboard wall that she had been staring at.

"I want all shields on maximum, do you hear me? This ship is going on the defense!" Just as the last words left his mouth, a shockwave of unknown origins rammed into the ship, knocking all of its passengers sideways. Kat fell straight backwards, her head slamming into the floor with an audible thud. Had any of the others been able to see what she saw, they would have watched the fabric of space itself ripple before tearing open. A second craft began appearing before them, entering their space as if it were emerging from a lake. The lights within the ship flickered before failing, all power diverting to keeping its passengers alive for the moment. Every monitor was flashing red warnings, the crew scrambling to return to their stations for a status report.
"Shields are down to 20%. Life support systems fluctuating, trying to stabilize them. What are our orders Captain?.... Captain?" Kat sat up from her position on the floor, rubbing the back of head with a confused expression.

"What the hell?" She glanced back to where the Captain lay on the floor, motionless. Unsure of whether the man was unconscious or dead, Kat stood and quickly assessed the situation. "This ship is under attack, do we have anything to fight with?" The men shook their heads no, explaining that the best they had were asteroid lasers and that even they had been knocked out with most of their power. "We'll never make it to the other side of the system if these guys are serious." Turning to look out the window, Kat bit harshly into her lower lip. "See that moon there? If I remember correctly it's covered by a jungle. If we land there we have a chance of sending out a distress signal while hiding from the enemy."
~~~

Marcie and Dustin lay side by side on the floor of the ship, groaning at the sudden blast that sent the pair flying. "Hey, you okay over there?" Dustin winced as he pushed himself up to a sitting position.

"Yeah, I'm good. You?" Marcie rolled over onto her back, still slightly dazed by the ordeal. She watched her brother nod out of the corner of her eye, finally pushing her body up to a sitting position. "What the hell was that?"

"A rogue asteroid?" He questioned, hoping that it wasn't something normal like that. It wasn't until the lights died out that he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Something didn't feel right, the air hadn't felt right for a little while now. The navigation problems Sora had mentioned earlier didn't sit well with him either. It didn't take a genius to figure out that something was very, very wrong at the present.
~~~
Sora had been stretching out her legs when the blast hit, knocking her off balance. She didn't fall like most of the others had, but she did end up slamming into the wall. Snarling viciously, she instinctively drew her blade, her blazing eyes scanning her surroundings for any sign of danger. Finding none, she rose up from her crouched position and instead awaited for any further instructions regarding her current assignment. Despite there being little light available on the ship, Sora could see perfectly, the dark having no effect on the beast-like woman.
~~~

A second blast rocked the ship, only this time there was a red light to accompany the blast. "Shields down to 10%, and they're falling fast. One more hit like that and we'll be wide open." Kat stared in horror out the window toward the pitch black warship that was moving to block their path.

"I don't care what it takes, get us down to that moon. NOW!" She had never seen anything so terrifying in her entire life, the mere existence of the ship sent a shiver down her spine. It screamed unnatural, and yet she new it was just like any ordinary war vessel. The unnatural feeling she got from it stemmed from its origins. "Hypothesis became Theory, and Theory then turned to Law. The facts of nature revealed themselves to those who sought the truth." She whispered, almost as if it were some sort of religious scripture she had learned at church. The ship launched forward as the crew kicked it into high gear, racing for what was now their sole chance for survival and praying to whatever gods they held dear for their lives to be spared. No more than fifty souls aboard the ship and yet it felt as if their survival decided the fate of existence.