I braced myself into the pilot's seat, my hands tight against the rails to either side of me and back firmly pressed against the seat as I was pushed back by the G-forces of planetary exit.

My stomach lurched, and the ship lifted off.

Bile rose from my belly, and I groaned pitifully. I hadn't eaten anything since my awakening, and that had been hours ago – nor had I had drunk anything for that matter. My stomach was trying to expel something, and I had nothing within to expel. The sensation felt as though my stomach was collapsing in on itself. Had my past-self deigned to learn of biology, I might have known what I was suffering. As it was, all I could do was seat back and look out the window at the super-cell made of iron-sand pass through and disappear in the horizon.

…too think I had been in the middle of that just hours ago.

It was a magnificent sight. Humbling and terrifying all at once.

Einstein in his caddy pushed the ship further up, breaking through cloud cover – clouds of alkaline gases at that, and more layers of atmosphere until we neared the stratosphere.

[…breaching stratosphere in five…] – he counted down, and I felt the resistance against the ship as the planet's gravity asserted itself upon, trying to pull us back to 'earth' as it were.

[…four-three-two-one…] – each second that passed, the push became just that much heavier against the ship. The ship's insides were protected somehow – 'a gyroscope system of some kind,' I hazarded a guess, my mind running a mile a minute as I drew on recovered memory and knowledge, 'or some counter counter-spin device acting against the push of the planet.'

The persistent layer of alkaline cloud faded, obscuring the beyond no more, to reveal the black of space that loomed ahead like a massive all-encompassing maw.

[…zero…] – the ship broke free and I felt the ship lurch once more as it came to an abrupt stop, going no further than the planet's orbit where I assumed we'd be protected from the radiation of the local star wherever it was.

[…hang on Guardian. Plotting course for stray-data coordinates…] – Einstein said, never once turning away from his station manning the ship. I was left in the seat to recover from the effects of planetary exit, with nothing to do but marvel at the sight of space and the planet below from above.

The planet below which became just that bit more interesting seen from above.

"…w-we were on a gas giant!" I exclaimed, more excited about the fact than I was surprised or shocked by it.

From above, the planet's profile contradicted my… admittedly narrow view of it from the ground. I'd expected to see a red planet, like the Mercury from memory or… Mars – another red planet from memory. Instead, it looked to have been largely composed of bluish-green acid oceans that took up more than… from a glance, about 98% of its surface… with the remaining two percent being small patches of landmass that, somehow, impossibly remained relatively untouched by the hostile elements, forming into little biomes. Each one unique from the other, with different conditions, colorations and… ecologies.

Near the north pole of the planet, I found the particular biome we'd just left – encapsulated within a breathable violet dome of oxygen, buffered by an unknown gas. The little – not so little actually, just looked the part in contrast to everything else on the gas-giant -biome was surrounded by more than a dozen storms, each one large enough to be visible from outer space.

It was the stuff of nightmare. To think, there was vegetation growing there, only made the planet stranger.

On a terrestrial planet, a storm the size of a city would be called a supercell. I wondered then, what one would call a cluster of continent-sized storms… made of acid rain, razor-sharp rust fall and whipping iron sand. Super-mega-cells maybe.

…all that accounted for, storms and all, the north pole was still the calmest biome on the planet – somehow.

Waves the size of the planet's smallest moon rose in a distant sea and crashed listlessly as they waned. The ripples they formed washed over the Biome nearest the center of the planet, submerging it entirely while swallowing others whole, yet leaving both intact but shattering others, only to reform similar formations elsewhere from the pieces of the broken.

I was for the second time, humbled.

I fiddled with the ship's sensorial – the controls were somewhat intuitive and my time in the workshop hadn't been spent panicking over my undeath. Einstein took over sometime halfway and redirected me to the atmospheric and ground reports after noticing the trend in my fumbling.

With silent thanks, I read the values on-screen and balked.

"Oh shit!" In the confusing mess of numbers and arbitrary walls of text, I found a gravitational-binding-energy value.

It brought to attention the moons.

One of them, the smallest moon namely, was only months away from impacting the planet – and if the numbers were to be believed, it would do so with enough energy to quite literally shatter the celestial body.

"…no wonder you were so eager to leave the planet," I remarked.

[…the planet blowing up would have been the least of our worries…] – Einstein supplied. His tone far too nonchalant, -[…our arrival was fortunate enough to have occurred close to the two-hour window of clear skies that allowed our escape. Any later and we would have been stuck planet-side for decades waiting for the storm to subside…]

"Decades?" In my shock, I nearly shouted.

I had trouble trying to imagine a storm – dust or otherwise - bad enough to ground a space-faring ship for so long.

[…If the ship's sensorial is to be trusted, there was a two-hour window of clear skies that occurs once every couple... decades and we were lucky enough to catch it…]

At my confusion, he elaborated -[…it's a gas giant Guardian. Storms on gas-giants tend to persist for centuries. Millennia sometimes if they're large enough…]

"…huh," I exclaimed, "you learn something new every day I suppose."

Suddenly his haste to leave made even more sense.

[…regardless, brace yourself. I just finished plotting our course. The signal's source is surprisingly not too far from here. It's just on the outer rim of the system…] – he said, flying out of his caddy and near my chest where he then fell and took a rest in my lap.

I did as he said, and pushed myself back against the seat once more, bracing myself for the sudden lurch forward the ship fell into as it sped away.

The local star, hidden behind the gas-giant, peeked from the northern hemisphere of the planet below as the ship engaged its deep-space engine. I only caught a sliver of burning red – a red-dwarf - peaking just slightly over the planet's curvature, before everything outside the cockpit turned to white blurs and rainbow-like streaks.

Just as quickly as it happened, the white streaks faded, and the scenery changed with a burst of color. The ship came to a sudden stop.

My stomach danced, and I fell into a crouch atop the seat, my hands cradling my belly all the while as I nursed the worst case of vertigo I've ever suffered in this new life… likely my old one too.

I groaned pitifully and shot a baleful glare at the amused looking ghost, whose demeanor – if such a thing could be applied to a fist-sized drone – changed.

[…oh…] – he exclaimed, his voice snapping me back to reality from my suffering, tone expressing surprise at whatever laid ahead.

[…we are definitely not in our home dimension…] – he said, his eye/core fixed ahead, prompting me to look up and out the ship.

I turned, glanced out the window, and gasped.

Ahead, in the dark of space, laid a graveyard of ships. A decimated armada that numbered in the hundred-thousand made up of fighter crafts mostly, and a few carriers – the fighters were about five times smaller than Einstein's ship and the carriers large enough to fit a hundred fighters at once. They were, all of them, shaped to the likeness of a six-pronged star, colored blue and gold with clear viewports at the front.

I looked closer and noticed a trend. A most worrying trend. Namely, the method of destruction. Einstein had too, and had, at my prompting, pulled up a monitor for closer observation.

Each fighter-ship had been struck so methodically. Every single one had had its viewport 'pierced' - not broken or shattered as all glass wont to do - but pierced by strange and impossibly accurate weaponry so as to kill the pilot in the most efficient manner possible.

The remnants drifted off in the vacuum of space lifelessly, their hulls still burning from a very recent skirmish.

Whoever, or whatever had attacked this fleet had been thorough. It was… a little impressive, actually and I found myself wondering - perhaps a little darkly - what kind of weapon was capable of so much whole-sale genocide with such precision.

At the helm of the fleet - previously stationed at the back of said fleet - was a dreadnought, the mothership as it were. It was unlike anything else. Made of a material that looked to be solid-gold, glimmering even in the dark of space, top to bottom, with a thousand black dots lining either side… windows most likely, or venting ports. It was shaped much like the little fighter ships, except on a much larger scale.

The design wasn't very ergonomic, but then again… it was a space-faring vehicle. Aerodynamics do stop applying when there's no atmospheric resistance to be had.

Looking closer, purple fire burned from within, slowly disintegrating the mother-ship bit by bit.

"What do you think happened here?" I asked the ghost beside me, who looked at the scenery with a… slowly dawning look of horror.

[…I-it's Oryx all over again…] – Einstein ignored me and muttered to himself, shaking, his eye/core facing the capital ship at the back.

"Who?"

The ghost shot from his caddy, turned to me sharply and paused – likely considering his words – then replied with measured words as he turned away from me, all focus on a monitor to my far-front – […a story for another time. I'm receiving a strange signal Guardian, hang on…]

I sat up from my seat, leaning in to better see the monitor he had turned his attention to. The screen glitched, turning black once then back on again. A jumbled mess of strange letters filled the monitor, falling like green text, followed by an even stranger set of symbols… numbers I thought, recognizing the pattern and… a sort of rhythm to the numbers.

"What is it?"

[…a distress call… I think…]

"A distress call?" I repeated, surprised.

I hadn't expected there to be any survivors. At all.

…although, given the size of the fleet, I shouldn't have been as surprised. Statistics dictate that at the very least a few of its pilots…people… whoever or whatever had been manning them, should have survived. I had simply ruled out the possibility due to the nature of the weapon implemented.

…Its sheer thoroughness and method of destruction. It was the perfect weapon. To leave a survivor… not unlikely, simply a near impossibility unless…

…unless it was intentional. Whoever had done this wanted a survivor.

[…Its an audio file format, unlike anything I've ever seen. I can barely interact with it…]

"Can you play it?" I asked.

[…I can, but we won't understand it…] – he paused, shining his light on the monitor with more intensity, then continued, […at least not until I've translated the language to something coherent…]

"How long will that take?"

[…Not long actually…] he shifted and turned, rotating his component bits as he interacted with the distress signal, scanning its contents and going through the jumbled mess with increasing fervor, […The language is surprisingly intuitive. I already have a few words translated to Earth-Basic – like Nova, Star, and Queen. It's very fascinating…]

Silently, I agreed with him. I imagined it to be – it wasn't the prospect of learning alien languages that excited me, rather, the doors communication would open… doors that led to technology and knowledge.

"Do you need to be here for that… in the ship I mean?"

[…Not really…] – Einstein replied, then turned and cast a curious gaze on me, […why do you ask?...]

"Do you know where the signal is coming from?"

[…one of the bigger ships near the capital Ketch…] – he answered, hesitantly, […it's a carrier of some sort…]

He brought up a monitor with a screen-cap of the wreckage. There was a spot of red near the center, highlighting the ship in question – it was one of the less damaged ships, with its internal lights still functioning.

"I want to board the ship and look for any survivors. Someone had to have sent the signal, right?" I reasoned.

[…something Guardian. Something did send the signal. Not human, not exo, not awoken…] – he paused, and grumbled to himself in a tone that expressed his 'disgust' speaking – […not hive, fallen, or cabal either. Something…unknown to me. Alien. Potentially hostile alien…]

The tone he spoke of the latter three was nothing if not indicative of his attitude towards them.

[…'It' might not even be alive anymore. Are you sure you want to do that?] Einstein asked, hovering inches from my face as he spoke, his shell turning sharply with each sentence.

'Alien.' Thinking of it, the concept felt… novel to my newly risen self. Not quite as impactful as I felt it should have been. The feeling of newness I expected was muted. Everything was new to me. As far as I was concerned, this was just one more alien thing to add to my list of alien things… Einstein being number one on that list.

I pushed him away, and replied, "I do. It's less a matter of finding someone – though if that does happen it happens, we establish contact, and go from there - the most important thing is finding where those ships came from."

[…trace our way to civilization…] – he trailed, connecting the dots.

I snapped a finger and shot him a grin in affirmation, "exactly."

[…smart of you, and pragmatic…] – he approved, then added, reluctantly, […fine, we'll board the ship, but I'm not letting you go wearing spare robes and unarmed. Wait a few and I'll have a proper outfitting for you fabricated and some basic armaments – just need to find a spot…]

The ship stirred, moving back and away from the wreckage. There were no celestial bodies nearby to orbit, but there was plenty of debris to hide behind and hitch on to conserve fuel instead of remaining stationary in the dead of space, inside a recent war-zone.

It took a while, but Einstein found what looked to have been a blast door – a large sheet of dense bronze metal drifting lightly near the capital ship – and landed on one side of it, killed the engine and detached from his caddy and led me to the armory.

[…earlier, when I mentioned the possibility of your past-self dying on a battlefield…] – he started, rather bluntly as the armory door pulled open unbidden, […you refuted and said that you might be able to design a weapon…]

"I did," I replied, following the ghost, heading towards the far end of the room with the machine station connected to the cache of glowing cubes.

[…This world is not without its dangers it seems and that skill of yours… it'll serve us well. If you really want to board that ship, then I'll have to implore you to use that skill to arm yourself… but first, I'll have to teach you the basics of using a glimmer-fab…]

A strange name for a machine I thought. It was, as the name implied, a fabricator of some sort – not unlike a three-D printer, just several centuries… or millennia head - with the distinct input-monitor on one side and the print-head module inside the machine. It was a solid design, and I couldn't have built something similar better myself. The only glaring issue I had was the material used to fabricate – there were no metal spools or filament attached to the machine, just the cache of blue cubes.

The blue cubes. There was a lot of those thing in the ship, now that I thought of it – in fact, most of the cargo bay was filled with them.

"…glimmer…," I mused to myself, then asked, "what's glimmer Einstein?"

[…Glimmer is in short Programmable Matter…] he replied.

"Programmable matter?" I repeated, just to be sure I hadn't misheard.

His eye cracked wide open, and his component bits flared as he answered – […programmable matter Guardian, and that it entails…]

Questions flowed to my mind in waves. I wanted to ask how one goes about programming matter. To take the essence of everything, then force… no, convince it to assume a form different from its intended shape. Forget nanotechnology, who needs it when you can operate near the quantum level, affecting energy and atoms directly and molding them like clay.

That wasn't science, nor magic – it was the realm of divinity. Creation itself.

…and he talked of with such nonchalance, like it was an everyday part of life to him.

Was this one of the technologies gifted to humanity by the traveler?

No doubt, there were limits to this technology. There had to be. It was too good to be true. Even neutered, It was still a miraculous piece of technology.

He was showing off, I could just tell... the smug little thing. I didn't want to humor him, but the prospect of programmable-matter was such a shock to my brain that I couldn't hold my excitement. Really, why would I hold myself back when we had a ship full of the stuff.

"Show me," I demanded, my reflection on the monitor showing my eyes glowing a burning-orange from excitement with a wicked grin.

The ghost disappeared in a flash of dull blue into the machine, which powered up slowly then blinked 'on' with blue lights followed by zipping noises as the fabricator print-head activated, running a few motion-tests then came to a rest, standing-by for further input.

A monitor popped out, followed by a prompt.

Einstein returned with another flash, popping out of the fabricator like the ghost that he was, and hovered to just above my shoulder.

[…right, let's begin. What's your preference? I have a few blueprints stored for Rifles, shotguns, swords, hand cannons... take your pick…]

I had a better idea. I trusted my gut feeling and reached into the breast pocket of my robes, and pulled out the micro-chip. I held it towards the ghost who inspected it with a curious glance. He scanned the chip, and after a brief moment, I heard him gasp...

[…that works too…]