Tanya felt the familiar calm settle over her as she entered her workshop. Out there was a world of politics, business negotiations, and money problems. They were problems for future Tanya. In here, she was simply Tanya the ship designer, surrounded by tools and materials that followed predictable rules and responded to logical solutions.
"Right then," she said to the fabrication equipment, "time for my reward."
Sage had informed her that the completion of the Rhu Shi had made her eligible for a reward. It was apparently another information dump.
//Dimensional physics instruction prepared. Knowledge transfer protocols are ready for implementation.//
"About that," Tanya said, settling into her workshop chair. "I know you want to just download everything into my brain like usual, but I'd prefer to truly learn this properly. Can you put it in a textbook or something?"
//Direct neural download provides optimal information transfer efficiency.//
"And entirely no understanding of how the concepts connect or why they work," Tanya countered. "I want to learn dimensional physics, not just memorise equations I can't derive."
They argued about it for several minutes before reaching a compromise. Sage would create virtual reality lectures that would let her experience the learning process without the disorientation of direct neural transfer.
//Dimensional physics instruction is crucial for your next vessel design. A scouting vessel will require navigation capabilities beyond standard human vortex technology. //
"Perfect," Tanya said. "Knowledge I can use."
For the first time in weeks, the drawer in her workstation was blinking with a soft blue light.
"Okay, let's see what you have for me today," she wasn't sure what type of technology Sage would use for the virtual lesson. She opened the drawer to find a pair of modern glasses that felt warm to the touch.
"Here we go," she said, sliding them on.
The workshop vanished, replaced by something that was unmistakably a classroom but unlike anything human. The furniture was geometric in shape, with Hard angles instead of smooth curves, and the lighting seemed to come from the walls themselves. Small, hairless, blue-skinned humanoids filled the seats, their large eyes focused attentively forward.
"Children," Tanya realised, though their size wasn't what gave it away. It was the way they fidgeted, whispered to each other, and looked around with the restless energy that transcended species boundaries. She knew this was not the same race that had lived on the rogue planet. Everything about them was different, from the architecture to their size.
A larger but still small by human standards adult of the same species entered, moving with the patient authority of an experienced teacher. When it began to speak, the sounds should have been incomprehensible, but somehow Tanya understood every word.
"Today we continue our study of dimensional mechanics," the teacher said, activating a holographic display that filled the center of the room. "Who can remind me what we call the space between spaces?"
Several small hands shot up eagerly. "Dimension Zero!" they chorused.
"Excellent. And what do we call the space where we live and breathe?"
"Realspace!"
Tanya felt her excitement deflate. This was her reward? A children's lesson covering concepts she already knew? The vortex or Dimension Zero, as these aliens called it, was the foundation of human interstellar travel. Every schoolchild learned the basics.
But then the teacher did something that made her sit up straighter. The holographic display showed two planes with one small and one large, floating in space. The teacher took a virtual needle and began sewing them together with precise, deliberate stitches.
"The relationship between dimensions is not random," the teacher explained. "By moving a small distance in Dimension Zero, we can traverse vast distances in realspace. But this is only possible because the dimensions are connected, like fabric sewn together."
He continued to explain that they could travel by hopping onto threads that connected the two and moving along the web of threads to exit. To this race, the vortex was a network to be traversed
The planes began to ripple and wave, creating patterns that Tanya recognised as storm formations, and all the threads in the localised area broke. The teacher explained to the students that these ripples needed to be avoided but that they were predictable.
Once the introduction was done, the teacher moved on to more complicated theory,
"This is only a simplified modelling; in reality, the dimensions aren't just in two dimensions"
Then something extraordinary happened as the holographic images changed. The planes twisted and wrapped themselves into complex shapes, Möbius strips that intertwined in impossible geometries.
"This is the true fabric of space," the teacher continued, manipulating the display. "Not flat planes, but curved, twisted surfaces where every point in one dimension corresponds to multiple points in the other."
The alien children took notes with apparent understanding, but Tanya's mind was reeling. This was completely different from the human vortex theory. Humans navigated using beacons and gravitational shadows, which were crude reference points that leaked between dimensions. They had no way to accurately map from vortex space to realspace.
The lesson continued with mathematical frameworks that made Tanya's head spin. Coordinate systems that accounted for dimensional curvature. Equations that could predict exactly where you would emerge in realspace based on your position and vector in Dimension Zero.
"But teacher," one of the young aliens asked, "how do we know where we are in both dimensions to calculate the transition?"
The teacher smiled. "Excellent question. Who can explain the principle of dimensional mapping?"
Hands shot up eagerly, and Tanya realised with growing amazement that these children were being taught navigation techniques that were centuries beyond human capability. They weren't just learning to use the vortex, but they were learning to understand it.
When the lesson ended and the workshop materialised around her again, Tanya sat in stunned silence, the glasses warm in her hands.
"Sage," she said finally, "how is it possible that children of that species understood dimensional mechanics better than our greatest scientists?"
//Educational curricula reflect species-specific developmental requirements. Your species approaches dimensional travel through empirical observation rather than theoretical understanding.//
"But with that math, with those coordinate systems... we could navigate to any point in the galaxy with perfect precision. We could—" She stopped, the possibilities sinking into place. "We could reach places that are cut off by artificial storms."
Eden-Three. Tsu Williams. The artificial vortex storms that had cut off an entire system from the rest of the Empire. With this level of mathematical precision, she could potentially navigate through or around barriers that conventional ships couldn't penetrate.
//Dimensional physics instruction provides comprehensive navigation capabilities,// Sage confirmed neutrally.
"You knew," Tanya said, understanding flooding through her. "You knew I'd figure this out. This whole lesson. It wasn't just about understanding vortex mechanics. You were preparing me for something specific."
//Educational progression follows logical sequences. Advanced navigation capabilities build upon fundamental dimensional theory.//
"That's not an answer, that's deflection." She stared at the equations still dancing in her memory, the elegant mathematics that could turn the vortex from a crude highway into a precision instrument. "But it doesn't matter. I can see what this makes possible." Already thinking about ship designs and navigation systems. "But this... this could be exactly what I need to establish trust with the government. And maybe help resolve whatever's happening on Eden-Three before it gets worse."
It was more complicated than that, though. Tanya knew you couldn't simply bypass storms as they were like walls in dimensional space, impermeable barriers that blocked normal vortex travel. And she still didn't understand the mathematics properly; the coordinate systems and dimensional mapping calculations would require watching that lecture dozens of times before she could even begin to apply them.
But the lesson had given her an idea for the ship design.
"A pathfinder," she said aloud, pulling up her design interface. "Not trying to punch through the storms, but dancing around them. We become the sewing machine"
The concept was elegantly simple: use multiple short vortex hops to bypass the storm barriers. Hop into the vortex, locate a safe space within the storm system, hop back to realspace, travel conventionally to a new entry point, then repeat the process. It wouldn't be quick, and depending on the storm size, it might take dozens of iterations, but it could theoretically work. If the storm breaks the threads, we just need to make new ones.
"Sage, can you run simulations on this approach?"
//Processing pathfinder navigation scenarios. Multiple variables require analysis.//
The results were both encouraging and sobering. To pass through the storm front at its shortest distance would still take a week to travel what normally would have been a forty-five-minute vortex journey. But compared to the years of pure realspace travel that would be required to reach Eden-Three conventionally, it was practically instantaneous.
"The idea looks sound," Tanya said, already sketching preliminary designs, "but there are so many variables to work out."
The engineering challenges were staggering. That many vortex hops would stress the vortex drive system beyond normal parameters, and she had no idea what cycling the drives like that would do to its operations or if it could be cycled like that. The power requirements would be enormous, demanding either a massive reactor or extremely efficient energy storage. The ship would need to be fast in realspace to minimise travel time between hop points, but also small enough to maximise the distance travelled in each vortex jump.
And then there was life support. She didn't know how many people they wanted to send on this mission, but keeping a crew alive during a week-long journey through hostile space would require careful resource management.
"This is going to be incredible," she said, the excitement of a truly challenging design problem flooding through her. "Complex, dangerous, and pushing every system to its limits."
//Your enthusiasm for difficult engineering problems remains consistent. However, I must temper your expectations regarding one crucial aspect.//
"What's that?"
//The dimensional coordinate recording and navigation calculations are beyond your current capabilities. Only I possess the computational ability to perform real-time dimensional mapping at the precision required for pathfinder navigation.//
Tanya stopped sketching; the full meaning of Sage's words caught up in her mind.
"You're saying the ship can't operate without you and, by extension, me physically present?"
//Correct. The navigation system would require my direct interface with the ship's computers. Manual coordinate entry by human operators would be too slow and imprecise for safe pathfinder operations.//
"Which means..." Tanya felt her stomach drop as she understood what this meant. "I would need to go on any mission this was ship was assigned to."
//Affirmative. Your participation would be essential for successful navigation through the artificial storm barriers.//
She stared at her design interface, the preliminary pathfinder schematics suddenly looking less like an exciting engineering challenge and more like blueprints for her own potential doom. Building a ship to reach Eden-Three was one thing. Actually riding it through artificial vortex storms created by a revolutionary with alien technology was something else entirely.
"Well," she said finally, trying to keep her voice steady, "I guess I'd better make sure this ship is really, really good at keeping people alive."