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Davis runs the mental arithmetic, and comes up with around 30 minutes before they get to wherever it is that they're...

The realization of exactly what he's staring at wipes away all trains of thought. Even without the mental imagery provided by the...whatever the fuck these things call themselves, Davis refuses to call them "the Masters", it's obvious that what they're looking at is something incredibly massive, something produced by a civilization far, far more advanced than Earth or even the Imperials.

Staring out the window at a sight beyond human or Wherren comprehension loses it's appeal once you process exactly what the enormous black mesh-like structure is though. At least at this point, where that's all you can see. Davis looks over to the inscrutable golden humanoid. "So, how many of there are you? What are the living conditions like on that...thing? How is this...tour, lesson, whatever it is, going to go down?"

"The details of the habitat/home are variable according to each inhabitant's biology/wishes. You are our guests and there is much to learn from each other."

Davis nods. Despite the peaceful nature of their encounters so far, he knows that he's in the presence of an immensely powerful being (and judging by the incomprehensibly large structure before them, an even more powerful race) that he has zero read on and a completely alien thought process that could probably vaporize him with a thought. It's not a comforting idea.

He looks over to Swims and Ngawai. "How are you two holding up?"

"Actually, I'm fairly good," Ngawai replies. "Kind of excited... although I'd like to tell those pious shitheads on Sambasan they're wasting their time."

"I'm going to rest, I think," Swims signs, his newly-attached arm moving slowly but moving nonetheless. "Wake me when we get there, Davis."

The humanoid picks up on the conversation, and adds, "If you would like to/need to rest first, I can adjust our velocity so there is a larger relative timespan before we arrive."

Davis stretches, yawns and checks his watch. "Well, I can certainly tell you that I didn't get any rest in whatever hallucination that thing trapped me in, and we've all been up for the last day or so. You okay with taking a bit longer and standing watch, Ngawai? We can do two shifts, I'll sleep first, then you."

"Sure." She checks the load in her SCAR and eyes the golden humanoid as if to say "try something."

"Let's add four or five hours to the travel time, then," Davis says, laying down across the seats, arms folded across his rifle. He closes his eyes and almost immediately falls asleep.

Davis' sleep is blissfully dreamless. Ngawai wakes him and reflexively stops Davis' hand from snapping to his weapon. "Shh, everything's fine," she says. "Your turn on watch. Oh, and the gold she-he is Groi. Or its species is, or are, Groi. Whichever, I'm getting some sleep."

The statite shell has grown; the network of astronomically vast solar sails fills the forward view of Davis, Ngawai, and Swims' vehicle.

"So," 'Groi' projects at Davis. "How does a native Earthman, a descendant of warrior-slaves, and a one-armed sophont - whose species' planet was yet to be seeded with an instance - engage a tier 1 instance and clear an infestation as old as the facility that it contaminated?"

The humanoid is definitely getting better at projecting natural-sounding thoughts.

"Very carefully," Davis says with his trademark smile, scooting over as Ngawai pushes him out of the way so she can lie down. He stands up and walks around the vehicle a few times to stretch his legs out. "Well, I don't know what a tier 1 instance or a sophont are, or where you're getting your information from, but the Wherren have had a Gateway for a long time, as far as I can tell. And if you don't know that, there's probably a whole lot more you don't know about."

Davis sits back down, on the end of the bench closest to Groi. "Seems to me that whoever has been keeping you up to date, the Imperials, probably, has been feeding you some bad intel. Let me get you up to speed about what I know, see if we can figure out where they've been lying to you..."

Davis recounts everything he can remember, and Groi listens patiently. It's entirely possible that Groi slows the vehicle to allow Davis to finish. Ngawai certainly appreciates the extra sleep, and Swims is in an exhausted heap.

"Your tale is very informative, and very troubling. It appears that we have both made incorrect predictions/assumptions about the status of the other. The actual truth may elude us even now."

The statite shell draws closer, and Davis can make out Montana-sized superstructures blotting out what little light makes it through the gaps in the sails.

"You assumed we were receiving data from you... the Imperium's data. Your faction/tribe/nation politics are difficult for us to follow, forgive me. The primary instance you were to use was contaminated, however. It was impossible for us to alert you without compromising our spacetime. We predicted you might not uphold the agreement we and your First Emperor made, the accord by which we would withdraw in exchange for continual information, and so did not overly concern ourselves with the well-being of the species that had so recently taught us so many harsh lessons. Judging from the remains at the border facility, however, it would seem that 24 emissaries attempted to contact us. The female here informed me that although there are discrepancies, the dates involved roughly correspond with the twenty-four scheduled turnovers in Imperial leadership. She says there have been more than 24 Emperors, but that the more... 'religious' is the word she used... sacrifice themselves to this 'Black Gate' at the end of their tyranny in order to obtain true immortality. How ironic."

"Meanwhile, we were unaware that the majority of your species' population were unaware of their own homeworld, and that a sizeable minority of your species were unaware of the majority's very existence. We eventually encountered emissaries from your homeworld's tier 2 instance, but they had no knowledge of the Imperium at that time. When we arrive, you may wish to speak to them."

"Whoa," Davis says. "Hold up. What agreement? What lessons? Did the Imperium betray you somehow?"

"They were not the Imperium yet, but yes, they betrayed us. We had knowledge and technology, they had the peculiar combination of communication, intelligence, endurance, and cunning to use that technology to defeat our enemies. In hindsight, it is not surprising that they would continue their warfare upon us."

"The lessons I referred to are a euphemism. I was getting used to the nuances of your neural patterns; in the future, I will err on the side of precision. Those of you we had abducted, armed, sent forth to fight in our name murdered us. The exact records were lost, but you outnumbered us before the war and after the rebellion there were not many of us left. We struck a bargain with who would become First Emperor. They would hunt us no more, we would withdraw from our volumes of spacetime, and in return they would send us whatever data they could gather."

Davis watches the massive shell get closer. A tiny pinprick of light flares ahead - a port opening. "So, the Emperors would report back to you about what's going on, you get your data, and they go from trying to kill you to worshipping you. I can see how well that worked out for you," Davis says. "Why take humans in the first place? What were you fighting that you couldn't deal with yourselves? You obviously had the technology to get the job done."

"Technology does not win wars by itself," the Groi replies. "We are explorers, gatherers, researchers, inventors, changers. Violence and war are alien to our processes. Only a few of us can make those leaps, and only then to the most basic of tactics. Of all the sentient species, humanity makes the best warriors. Cunning enough to win individually, social enough to cooperate, cruel enough to sacrifice in the name of victory... or brave, depending on who makes the decision."

The pinprick has already swelled to encompass more than half the vehicle's forward view. What looks like a calm silver ocean ripples slowly ahead of the vehicle.

The light from the silver screen (heh) stirs Ngawai awake as Davis asks, "That's all very flattering, but who or what were you fighting? Could they still be around?"

The humanoid's dead doll face takes on a pensive cast. "To understand this, you must understand the burden of light. Even with extension treatments, cloning, uploading, colocation, sublimation, no matter how long we exist in this spacetime, it is still a linear progression. What little of the universe that can be seen along this progression is not enough. Even at our peak, we were confined to just this one galaxy by the speed of light."

"So we cheated, and in doing so trespassed against the hostiles."

The silver barrier is easily the size of a sprawling city, flanked all around by monolithic black shapes, too large and too uniform to assign specific features, their details too tiny to assist description. The vehicle passes through the barrier - some sort of force field - and the view blanks out for a moment.

"The hostiles drink from Klein bottles and dance between Planck time. Truly alien to us, they did not communicate or negotiate. They responded to our breach of their territory with genocide. The tomahawk you destroyed was one of many weapons used during our war, a relic from long ago. It - like all their weapons - was a chimera, built to infiltrate our physics from the other side. Our then-current transluminal methods were open portals inviting countless attacks. We created the Gateway as an alternative method of transport. It cheats, but in a different way. It does not produce infection vectors - no angles."

Swims-the-Black is awake now as well. The Whiirr glances down at his sword, at the sharp edge that failed him against the demon.

"Every surface in these border facilities you have seen is curved. Every instance anywhere close to this spacetime is located within a border facility. It prevents any possible hostile incursion. So to answer your second question, yes, the hostiles are still around."

The view-plane opens once again. Ngawai and Swims stand and join Davis as what must have been either a series of fields or a single very thick field falls away, revealing a blue sky lit by a yellow star. Clouds race across in front of the vehicle. Mirror-bright egg-shaped pods flit through the air above and around them. A patchwork expanse of terrain stretches out below the vehicle. Davis spots a herd of... somethings undulating through a prairie.

"This is one of many environments," Groi explains. "This one closely mimics your homeworld. It is habitat to some, home to others, archive and laboratory to us."

A handful of identical golden humanoids wait in a circle atop a small hill. Small quicksilver drones in a variety of shapes from geometric to feline accompany some. The vehicle lands smoothly, goes dark, and opens one of the chamber archways. A cool breeze snakes through the vehicle and Davis smells fresh air tinged with grass and soil.

Davis carefully steps towards the exit of the vehicle, SCAR in hand and at the ready. Motioning for Ngawai and Swims-the-Black to stay inside the vehicle, he takes his first step out of the hatch, and looks around him, left, right, behind, and especially up. It smells like Earth, an organic scent that's different than the few planets he's been on and definitely different from the sterile smell of the palaces of Napai and the stale, dead smell of the quarantine facility. He kneels down and takes up a handful of dirt, rubbing it in between his fingers, and looks at the grass surrounding him. He just tries to take the scene in with all his senses, seeing how real this all is. When it seems safe, Davis turns back around and motions for Ngawai and Swims-the-Black to follow him out.

"Very impressive," he says, then looks over at Ngawai and Swims-the-Black as they take in the surroundings. "What do you two think? See anything you recognize?"

After they finish talking with Davis about the scenery, he looks back to Groi. "Anyone from Earth or the Imperium live here, or are they elsewhere? If there are, I'd like to meet them and talk with them a bit, especially if they're from Earth. If not, what's next on the tour?"

The dirt, the grass, it all feels very real to Davis, down to the green smudges left on his fingers. The horizon looks wrong, somehow - too flat, maybe even concave. Nothing surprising, there, however. They are on a shell, not a globe. The sunlight is warm, but feels perhaps a little too diffuse.

"It's pretty," Ngawai says after blinking several times. "But it smells funny."

"If this is false, then it has fooled me," Swims agrees.

Groi follows Davis, Ngawai, and Swims out of the vehicle, which from the outside looks like an round, elongated, bulbous pyramid with one definite "forward" end. The vehicle lifts off with a "ripple" felt through the breeze and darts up into the sky before abruptly disappearing.

In response to Davis' question, Groi says, "Yes, and they should be arriving momentarily." And in response to that, two of the mirror-silver pods Davis had seen flitting through the air skim over the tall grass, eventually coming to a gentle stop between Davis' people and the group of Groi on the small hill. The pods flicker out, revealing a black male and white male. They're wearing simple pants, low-topped shoes, and white t-shirts.

"The grass and shit's real, the sky's fake," the black guy exclaims in English. His hair is short, his sideburns are long, and his eyes look over the newcomers with disbelief. "All held in place and generated with fields."

His companion, a balding, muscled and mustached Slavic man shows no such suspicion, instead approaching Davis with arms wide. His shout is also in English, but tinged with a faint Russian accent.

"My friends! You received our message!" He slows upon realizing how large Swims-the-Black is, then says in a normal outside speaking voice, "I am sorry, it has been so long, and we know everyone here already. I am Dominic Bullchev, this is my friend Kelly Washington, and you have already met Chauncey. Behind us are Shiny, Sleepy, Doc, Spock, and Ivan."

"Not their real names," Washington says. He walks towards the group as well. "Look, they told us you were from Earth, but unless you found Bigfoot I think we're missin' something."

Davis slings his assault rifle and smiles. "Well, you're actually missing two things," he says in English. He shakes both the men's hands. "Garrett Davis, Los Angeles born and raised. My two friends here are not from Earth, though. The lovely lady with the assault rifle is Ngawai Lea Holoni, from the Imperial planet of Sambasan, and my big friend here is Swims-the-Black, from Whirr. We're here after...well, it's a really long story. Let's just say that a lot's changed while you guys have been gone."

"What are you saying?" Ngawai asks.

"Just introducing you two, they're friendly so far," Davis says, switching over to Imperial. "The black guy says that that the grass and dirt on the ground is real, but the sky's fake and generated by fields. Just keep an eye on these two, and Swims-the-Black, keep perimeter watch."

Davis looks back at Washington and Bullchev, big, friendly, "glad-to-see-you-sorry-bastards" smile still on his face. "So, how the fuck did you two unlucky bastards wind up all the way out here?" he says in English.

Kelly starts. "I and four other scientists went out to Amundsen-Scott at the South Pole to verify some claims made by the team down there. It was all real shady, but they still had to keep it open to other countries. Dom here was the engineer-"

"Mechanic. Kelly is too kind," Dominic interjects.

"Only 'cause we have guests," Washington snarks. "So there was us and two Air Force guys what flew the plane, and we get to the station and everyone's gone. We root around, find some recordings, head over to this structure buried in solid ice. Like a giant umbrella skeleton. They must've had to dynamite their way down or something, but at the bottom of their excavations there's this perfectly circular room carved-"

"Melted-"

"Right. Melted out of the ice, and there's what we NOW know is what the Groi call an instance. The transport rings you've no doubt used. Turns out the Groi made that room a makeshift prison, and the previous team broke the seal of that perfect sphere."

It's clear that the memories their story dredges up cue different emotions in each man. Bullchev's face darkens with distantly-remembered hatred, while Kelly struggles to hide the fear even now. Bullchev takes over the narration.

"Chauncey and his people have their different words for the angle beast, but to me and Kelly, that is what it was and that is what it will always be. It killed the woman first - I was right there and could do nothing. The lieutenant drove it off with his rifle into the snow, but it could come and go as it pleased."

"I thought I'd be safe in the vault, man," Kelly pipes up. "Fuckin' vault was a fuckin' box, man! It came out of the goddamn corner from behind me!"

"So." Dominic says. "Harrison studies the markings on the ring and compares it to recordings and research. I and the lieutenant make weapons. Make flamethrower. Make ball-bearing guns. Pipes and clubs. No sharp blades, no angles. We-"

"Wait, man, that was after we tried to call for help," Kelly adds.

"Yes, right. Sorry."

"Every time we tried a radio the damn thing would just use it pipe in our screaming friends. That was the only sound it ever made."

"We made recording, though, wrote down what we could, and set one of the snowcats off across the glacier. THEN we killed the beast."

Kelly elaborates. "We put the whole 'space jail' thing together ourselves, figured we could put the angle beast back through the ring. Not quite. The thing got us outside the site. Harrison got the ring open, then he set off the JP-4. Dom, myself, and the L.T. got through the ring."

"It took a while, but the Groi found us," Bullchev picks up. "They had not expected that ring to be used. They gave the three of us a choice - stay with them or return to our people." A smile curls Dom's mouth, and Kelly smirks a little bit.

"That poor Air Force bastard. See, they couldn't send him back to Earth, 'cause the ring got blocked when the jet fuel went up. And to the Groi, the Imperium WAS 'our people'. I don't know where the fuck they sent that guy but it wasn't Earth."

"And so Kelly and I chose to remain here. That was about 24 or 25 years ago."

It takes Davis a second or two after Washington mentions the gateway buried in the ice before he makes the connection to the files on the Mesas Negras Gateway back on Earth. Once they're finished, Davis speaks up in English. "That makes sense. You were the ones who discovered the gateway on Earth. I don't know about any signal, but we did find the gateway. It just took us 23 years to get it turned back on. I'm not so sure you got the...angle beast, though. We killed something that sounds exactly like what you're describing, and the Groi say that it had been a 'contamination' in that area for about as long as you've been here. It is dead, though."

Davis continues, still in English. "A lot of things have happened in the last year or so. We've made some friends," he gestures towards Ngawai and Swims-the-Black, "and enemies. Mostly enemies. The Imperium sees our return to the galaxy as a threat, and intend on killing or enslaving all of us to prevent what they think will be a disaster."

Davis waits for that news to sink in. "So, is there anything about this place you can tell us? Who or what else is here, how things work?" He looks back at Ngawai and Swims-the-Black, and has an idea. "How about what the planet that the Air Force lieutenant was sent to? I know it's been a while, but my team's been around a fair bit, they might recognize it."

"Chauncey and his say there are more than one angle beast," Dominic says. "The hostiles use them as we would tanks or missiles. Hard to say. But no matter, it is dead."

"We know the backstory of the Imperium, basically," Kelly replies. "But the Groi don't know the current state of things. They're explorers and collectors, kind of scientists. Like me, I guess. This habitat of theirs is so they can keep exploring, keep their species alive, without giving away their position or tempting attacks by Imperials or hostiles or whoever. Most of this shell is left to its own devices. They'll let a plate "bake" for a decade or a century or so and see how things progress."

"We are the only humans here," Dominic says, with a sadness that you feel has been long buried. "And the Groi are friendly but... they are not people. Their avatars are old, built to speak to humans. We have seen them for real and they... they are not people."

"They're fuckin' gross, before you ask," Kelly answers. "They don't mind usin' their avatars, and then we don't have to talk to snail squid monsters. Anyway, how things work here is you pretty much do as you like. There's enough room - I still can't really wrap my head around how much acreage there is here."

"I am building a ship," Dom interjects. "I made axes and saws to cut the trees, and built a mill to cut the lumber, and now I am learning how to treat the lumber. Is not easy."

"He's old-fashioned," Kelly says. "Your field generator can handle most any task you need, and then if you need an actual real something, well, they've got matter conversion. Hell, they just spun a portal out of water molecules when they sent the lieutenant back, which reminds me, you asked about his planet. All I really remember is him mouthing 'this isn't Earth' from the other side, and the two suns."

"It was green," Dom says. "Craggy, lots of plants. It looked like it overlooked an ocean."

Davis switches to Imperial, translating for Ngawai and Swims: "They say that there was a third man that came through with them, and the Groi sent him off somewhere else. Somewhere with green plants, rocky terrain, an ocean and two suns. Ring any bells?"

"So no Gateport," Ngawai says. "And there aren't too many settled planets with multiple suns."

Swims-the-Black makes his species' awful guttural laugh. "Bashakra. And before the Imperium's return, from the sound of it."

Davis shakes his head. "Well, let's hope he made it out of there before the Imperium blasted it to glass," he says in Imperial. "We'll have to get whatever gatecodes the Groi have on Bashakra before we leave, see if we can find him. He might even be on Atea somewhere, if he's still alive."

Davis turns back to Dom and Kelly. "So, I think that's all the questions I have, except for one," he says in English. He thinks about how to phrase his next statement before he continues. "We have the gatecode for the Earth gate. We're heading back there when we're done here. How do you two feel about going home?"

Kelly and Dom look dumbfounded, maybe a little apprehensive.

"I... I don't know," Kelly says. "This has been home for half my life, I don't even know what Earth is like anymore. I've got a place here."

"The Groi say we could not go back, we would risk contamination", Dominic adds. He then subtly caresses his wrist device and adds softly, "I do not think they would be able to stop us, but I won't leave Kelly here to be the only person in this place."

Kelly smiles and nods. "Thanks, Dom, but you do what you need to do. If you want to go, do it. I- I need some time to think about it. And you, Davis, you need to catch me up," he says jokingly. "Last I heard, Reagan was president."

Davis nods. "Well, let's ask the Groi." He looks at the golden humanoid shell. "If they want to come back with us, can they? Will anything have to be done to them?"
'Chauncey' regards the group. "Kelly and Dominic are free to leave, but their knowledge of our home is a risk we cannot allow. We could remove only the technical information, or we could remove the majority of it, if you feel you would rather not deal with such memory gaps."
Kelly immediately steps away from Chauncey and Davis. "Whoa! They just got here and all of a sudden we're talking about digging in my brain! Hold the fuck up, people!"
Davis puts his hands up to try to calm Kelly down. "It's non-invasive, right? And you can only eliminate the technical knowledge, nothing more? They'll remember being here and doing the things they did, just not how the technology works, right?"
"What's the point then? You act like Earth's in trouble, and believe me I want to help if I can, but if they're going to strip out anything useful then all you've got is a 50-year old whose practical knowledge ended more than two decades ago."
"Earth is in trouble, but this isn't about just picking your brains for knowledge. The people of Earth are about to get a really quick and dirty introduction to the galaxy at large, and we need as many goodwill ambassadors as we can get our hands on. You two have lived with the Groi for 25 years. You're living proof that not everyone out there wants to kill us." Davis puts his hands back down. "Plus, I figured that after this long, you'd want to see your friends and family again. It's nice here, but don't you want to see Earth again?"
"Yes," Dominic says. "But... what is there to go to? It has been 25 years."
"We're probably dead as far as the world knows," Kelly adds.
"Trust me, the last 25 years have been very interesting," Davis says. He gives them the five minute breakdown of what's happened on Earth in the last 25 years, which takes ten minutes as he tells it both in English and Imperial for the benefit of Ngawai and Swims. He's been a spy for most of that time, so he throws in the relavent classified details, too. "...and then we left for Napai."

Davis takes a moment to let them process, then speaks again. "Well, that's all the answers I can give you. If you don't want to go, I'll totally understand. If our fight against the Imperium goes well, you might even get this chance again. But right now, this might be the only shot you guys have to see home again before things get really crazy. So, what do you say?"
Kelly shakes his head. "Look, I need... I need some time to think. Are you going back, like, right now?"
"Nope. We've still got the grand tour to finish, so we'll stop by before we leave, and you can give us your answer then."

"I think we'll go with you. It's not every day we get visitors, ya know." Kelly looks over at Dominic, who nods.
"Alright, then." Davis turns to Swims and Ngawai and switches to Imperial. "They're gonna be coming with us, see if they can figure out whether or not they want to come back."
"Sounds good," Ngawai says. Then, whispered, "Are they really just gonna let us go? And how much can they hear? Shit, can they hear me think? I shouldn't have... heh, didn't mean that thought there..."
"Well, it's too late for that now," Davis says, smiling at that last bit. "We'll just have to roll with whatever happens next."
He turns back to Dom and Kelly, speaking English again. "Sounds good to me." He turns to the Groi. "So, where to next?"

"Wherever you like," Chauncey says. "I thought perhaps our Earth archives would be of interest." One of the other Groi, maybe Spock (although Dom's introductions were pretty brief), passes out wristbands and thin circlet-tiaras. A third Groi approaches Swims-the-Black with a slightly different frisbee than the human norm.

"This device will fully repair the damage you sustained," the automaton tells the Whiirr. "It is keyed to your specific makeup. Repairs should be accurate to within a point zero two margin." The device flashes its familiar golden light and all goes to plan. The Groi passes the frisbee to Swims after he proclaims his pain gone.

Kelly explains the wristbands before Chauncey can go into too much esoteric theory. "It's Star Trek stuff. It makes low-level fields, similar to what holds all this land together. It's a tractor beam, a knife, a tiny airplane, a spacesuit, a shovel, pretty much whatever you need. Dom and I had our controllers implanted; you guys need to use that headgear."

There's a definite design similarity between the alien devices and the golden implant-plus-drone arrays touted by the highest-ranking Imperial Keepers. Ngawai slips her circlet on and tightens her bracelet. Dominic cautiously points her hand away from the group, an amused, knowing smile on his face.

And that's how everyone else's first question about the field bracelets turns out to be "how do I create a force field in order to block falling debris?"

"Sorry! Sorry!" Ngawai shouts. Her errant test blows out a meter-wide sphere of grass and soil, spraying it in a geyser over the assembly. "Just curious was all."

Davis slides on the bracelet/tiara combo and is about to take a closer look at it, maybe try out levitating a few small objects when Ngawai suddenly gives him a crash course in generating a force field. He throws his hand up to shield himself from falling debris, and chunks of dirt and rocks bounce off an invisible shield above his head. There's no explosion, no heat or fire, just dirt thrown up into the air, like it was suddenly displaced by a force, which is what Davis figures is exactly what just happened.

Davis starts laughing. "Well, we know that they can really throw stuff around, too," he says in Imperial. He gives Ngawai a playful shove, which she returns, smiling herself. "Now that the weapons test is out of the way, I say we go check out those Earth archives. How about you two?" Davis asks, looking at Swims and Ngawai.