Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 24: For the Sake of Humanity (Patreon)

The next morning I officially joined the project.

Pascal met me already prepared, with a meticulously laid-out task list.

"We've secured stability," he began, unfolding a diagram on the holographic screen. "Under standard conditions the membrane no longer flickers."

"Except this is an evacuation portal. Fifty-fifty the conditions will be non-standard," I noted.

Pascal nodded and winced slightly.

"Agreed, but we've got bigger problems ahead of raising stability further and running additional stress tests."

I raised my right eyebrow pointedly.

"Dimensions and power consumption," Pascal said.

He unfolded a second diagram next to the first.

"Dimensions are the obvious problem. Spatial pockets aren't a cheap pleasure, and however much free space is left, every extra centimetre this device takes up is something else that won't fit in there any more."

"You're overstating it," I said. "People went on raids just fine before pockets existed. Yes, size can be reduced, but that problem's far less critical than stress resistance."

"But no less critical than power consumption," Pascal moved on to the third diagram. "At these dimensions, we've only managed to squeeze out forty seconds of operation. After that, the batteries need recharging. And, well, Space is something almost everyone and their dog cultivates now. Everyone who wants to use a spatial pocket picks it up. But Vacuum and Gravity are a whole different story. Especially Vacuum..."

Even the Federates don't really know what to do with it. There are a few defensive schools, but they're not very popular. You can get the same effect combining a few more popular qi instead.

Most Vacuum, or Void, cultivators I'd met had taken it up for their own experiments.

"A raid group shouldn't have to recharge the portal," I said. "The function should obviously exist for a worst-case scenario and for maintenance checks before deployment, but the raid group itself shouldn't be dealing with that."

"Exactly!" Pascal agreed. "That's why, first and foremost, we need to stretch the portal's operating time to three minutes."

"You can start and finish a fight in three minutes," I noted.

"Or you can hold off a monster while wounded comrades crawl through the portal. The portal's small. A healthy person will slip through, but a hurt one will literally have to crawl. That's extra time."

"Extra seconds," I said. "A minute and a half. That's more than enough for an emergency evacuation. Emergency!" I stressed. "Even stationary portals don't run that long. You can toss a wounded person through it. And there'll still be time to throw reinforcements to the other side, and even another portal..."

"Hm..."

"What?"

"I'm predicting an entirely new business," I said. "Territory scouting and selling raid-monster spawn locations. I know a marketing genius who could set the whole thing up so we get a cut. Just need to wait for his breakthrough."

"Let's say a minute and a half," Pascal agreed. "I built this project to save lives in the first place, to be honest."

"One life in particular, first and foremost," I said, making Pascal squirm. "Mate, I get it. Once you crawl your way out of hell by some miracle, you always want a backup exit on hand.

"Have you thought about wiring in zero-comms?" I asked.

"That'll increase the load on the batteries, not reduce it."

"True, but if you set up a dedicated rescue unit around this, that'll let them redeploy the necessary resources to the other side in time. Including extra batteries."

"Logical," Pascal agreed.

"How about you work your magic on the comms, and I'll see where we can cut power consumption?"

The upside of being the boss — you can dump all the work on your subordinates. Which is exactly what I did, diving fully into the portal schematics. I even stayed late at work, which technically qualifies as overworking.

A few models in the engineering AI showed I could extend the portal's active duration by 10-15 seconds. If the model wasn't wrong. And that was still too little.

Well, I hadn't expected to solve everything in one evening. My mood was good. I could definitely negotiate with Pascal to write off a couple of portals, especially since he clearly had the same plans himself.

And a message from Rene lifted my mood even further.

"I broke through. Party in my hall tomorrow to celebrate. A no-show makes you my mortal enemy."

"Ok," I wrote. "Congrats!"

"So are you coming or not? I gathered a full aura, damn it! Third-place prize!" he joked.

I called Rene and congratulated him.

"Congrats! I get the feeling you broke through with a bang just to lure me into your hall."

"No, I did it for the hall promotion."

"I'll be there, and you'll owe me your skills."

"What are we training?"

"Other skills. I've got a project brewing that could use some publicity. I'll fill you in later."

Both my and Bao's breakthroughs came with a fair bit of forum buzz.

Rene missed out on that. No injuries meant no buzz — just an official notice from the Meditation Hall representatives, long and purely technical, less about Rene's breakthrough and more about upgrading the breakthrough chamber shielding. New coating, better able to isolate energy fluctuations and prevent the "off-nominal incidents" that had previously caused injuries among cadets on the edge of breakthrough.

There weren't many comments under the post, but a few people asked whether Rene had really gathered his aura, or whether the Hall was just covering its arse over past failures and declaring him a fresh winner out of thin air.

For Rene, that was of course insulting. He'd been counting on some buzz to draw attention to his hall, but the forum didn't even mention that I'd trained there.

Though they did mention that he'd sold my materials.

It seemed that was exactly why he needed the party — to fix the situation with the forum. He added some plastic tables to his hall and invited his closest friends and best students, plus Bao.

He told Bao outright that he needed to show off all three of the first cadets who'd gathered full proto-auras, all in one place, to add some authenticity to his breakthrough claim.

Rene, of course, made sure we didn't get bored. Good food, drinks, and music. Kate made me show off the dance skills Mendoza had passed on to me.

The marketing ran in parallel, unobtrusively. To us, it was just a friend's party, someone who'd finally achieved what he'd wanted for so long. But for Rene, it backfired a little.

Those who knew him remembered his love of self-promotion the next day.

"Rene's advertising himself again?"

"Trained in his hall. If you got even the smallest win, he always turned it into a show. Remember how they congratulated Kazarian over that weekly tournament, and showered Sullivan in flowers after the monthly."

And a few dozen more comments that put him in an unflattering light and fed suspicions the announcement was fake.

Worried I might make things worse, I wrote: "He really did it, no doubt about that. He loves advertising, but he doesn't lie."

That livened the forum up a bit, and I immediately got a pile of questions I ignored, going back to working on the mini-portals, which I sat over until evening, right up until Zola called me and Bao out for coffee.

Zola picked Tangerine. It was much cheaper than Marco’s. And more crowded at that late hour. Mostly second- and third-periods, who counted their money more carefully. It didn't matter for the three of us any more, but spending it left and right is a sure road to empty pockets.

Zola had already taken a table under the interactive window showing some evening square, and was drinking cheap coffee, when Bao and I came over.

"Sit," she said, smiling. "My treat!"

"That'd be suspiciously generous," Bao noted, "if this were Marco’s."

Zola waved a hand, and drinks were brought to us.

Along with the coffee, the waitress, smiling, set a small plastic jar in front of each of us.

I looked at the jar. Then at Zola.

"What's this?"

"A container," she said, with a completely straight face.

"For what?" I asked.

I had no desire to play these games. My head was still humming with calculations.

"For saving humanity!" She was barely holding back from cracking up. "The Praxi Plan...

"Jake, you should know this. Novak's neck-deep in it."

I turned the jar over in my hands, trying to recall what I knew.

"The Praxi Plan is one of humanity's survival plans. We, as the Praxi, build ships and send crews into deep space, where the demons can't reach them." I lifted the jar and looked at Zola through it. "I definitely wouldn't fit in this. And Novak's not about to send me into space, either. He'd sooner throw me into the thick of a fight. So what's this for? Am I supposed to preserve my genetic material? Spit into it?"

"Yep," Zola nodded cheerfully. "You both need to spit into them. With your dicks."

Bao choked on his coffee and started coughing.

"For the sake of humanity's survival and preserving genetic diversity," Zola said, savouring the looks on our faces.

"So," I started slowly, staring at the jar with a new, considerably less pleasant understanding, "the Praxi Plan is literally a flying sperm bank for the end of the world."

"It's much more than that!" Zola disagreed, showing seriousness for the first time in the conversation. "It's a plan to save humanity as a species overall, not specific individuals. Mothership vessels loaded with sperm, eggs, materials for cultivation and breakthroughs, a library of techniques, and reproductive equipment capable of both cloning a person and growing one from potentially promising seed."

"But humanity isn't going to be wiped out," I said. "Humanity will survive within the Federation. Species survival doesn't carry that much weight here. Only the survival of a culture and a nation does."

Zola shrugged.

"I'm a bit more than your average medic. All questions go to whatever genius came up with this. Ask your master. I'm sure there's more to it, that the plan has a second and third layer."

"Maybe they want to raise a punitive squad against the demons? Turn them into demon-world raiders?" Bao asked.

I wasn't too keen on that idea, somehow. A shitty life awaits our descendants and clones. Even though this body wasn't fully mine in the strictest sense of the word.

"I'll pass," I said, and pushed the jar back towards her.

"You don't want to leave something behind?" Zola asked, surprised. "I get it when the thinhorns refuse, but you..."

"No!" I said firmly.

Bao didn't refuse, still turning his jar over in his hands, so Zola told him: "Drop it off at the medical department tomorrow."

Bao just sat there, staring at his jar as if it might suddenly come alive and attack him.

"Why us specifically?" he finally asked.

"Not just you. Nearly the whole school's going through this. But you two are on a special list because of the proto-aura. So the order came down to milk you first."

"And you decided to turn it into theatre for your own amusement," I nodded.

"Your faces the moment it clicks — best part of my week. The official wording on the request sounds so clinical it's downright creepy. 'Please provide a sample for long-term cryopreservation as part of the genetic security programme.' Ugh."

"Wait, because of the aura? Are you still up for having fun, or has that already passed?"

She looked at me uncertainly.

"State the whole proposal out loud, please, before I sign onto it."

"Rene got an aura too. We could stop by his place tomorrow during training and read that official request out loud to him. Give him some promotion."