Humanity Endures

Part 8 - Preparations | Chapter 3

Farlina's mind, guided by her digital desk's software and an assortment of productivity drugs, worked on the engineering task before it with brilliant determination. Rather than feeling the weight of her body, she felt as if her body was the design before her; every facet of the blueprint flowed through her augmented brain simultaneously, and revisions were as intuitive and as effortless as moving one's finger. Her mind flooded with an intoxicating mixture of data, and the tantalizing pleasure born from progress, Farlina was entirely oblivious to the fact that she had been within the digital space for over an hour; despite having worked tirelessly for every moment of that hour, she felt rejuvenated rather than fatigued. Engineering, something she was skilled at, benefited the galaxy, and was a welcome respite from internal emotional conflict; a simulated workspace was a welcome break from the physical world, with all of its issues, crises, and tragedies. Such was the power of the digital workspace, and such was the prowess of she who used it, that if Farlina wished to do so, she could design a small building within the space of a minute, though despite the fact that the weapon before her could fit in the palm of one's hand, the complexity required of the device had forced its design to take much longer.

Drawing inspiration and information repeatedly from alien weaponry that had been captured by human forces throughout the war, Farlina's brilliant work continued, though to an ignorant observer, she, sitting comfortably, her eyes closed and her body almost motionless, would doubtless appear to be sleeping in her chair. The next moment, as Farlina briefly contemplated the efficient construction of alien ranged weapons, a wave of realization slammed into her mind, and the following rush of inspiration forced her pulse to quicken excitedly. Revising the design before her in a matter of moments, Farlina successfully simulated the device in operation, and, grinning wickedly both in the digital space and in her physical chair, made a minor ergonomic adjustment to the weapon, hid her name in the design's data, and submitted the entire work, titled "Handheld Nuclear Grenade," to the WSRC. The next instant, Farlina exited the digital space and thrust her fist into the air victoriously: within the space of but a single hour, she had accomplished something long thought scientifically impossible, and though much of her work had revolved around repurposing an alien design, she still felt her heart bursting with pride at having done what had never been done by human hands before. The circumstances forced her to relish in the brilliant thrill of accomplishment, and that of contributing to a galactic war effort. Of course, Farlina couldn't test her invention when she was on-board the Ruthless, but she had no doubt that the WSRC's extensive labs could, and that they were desperate enough to do so quickly. Roughly three minutes later, while she was still reliving her triumph, an enthusiastic textcomm from the WSRC itself reached Farlina, informing her that her design had been accepted and would enter testing immediately, to begin production galaxy-wide if this testing succeeded — the message even noted that the WSRC's scientists were impressed!

Farlina grinned joyfully, reclining in her chair and gazing at the ornate ceiling of her personal office as she disconnected from the digital desk before her, pleased at another job well done, as she momentarily put off beginning her next task. Rather, glancing at the walls of her room — walls that had been adorned with dozens of gilded variants of weaponry she had designed — Farlina put in a request to engineering for them to manufacture one of her nuclear grenades and send it up to her office: what was the point of accomplishment if one could not take pride in it, after all?

Letting her mind wander briefly, Farlina realized that she was impressed not only with herself, but with the WSRC, which had responded nearly immediately to her design and had even accepted it without much hesitation. It seemed that warfare and crisis had oiled the gears of galactic bureaucracy to an extent Farlina hadn't thought possible. Of course, the haste made sense: humanity's military was technologically outmatched by its alien foe, and the only way to combat this was to accelerate the rate at which innovation occurred — even if it meant that testing couldn't be as thorough, or that designs couldn't be fed through seventy different offices and labs before they underwent manufacture on even a limited scale. Farlina wanted to end the war as quickly as anyone else, though she couldn't help but admit: she greatly preferred this more reckless version of science to the older one.