Ravens of Eternity

88 Hidden Signals

Similar to Eva, Miko decided to go out and do a little digging. She had never been the type to let things get to her, but having heard about Godeater seriously scared her. For her, it wasn’t so much about its lethality as it was about its unfathomable nature.

Her pragmatism didn’t really allow for the unknown to exist. Or rather, when she didn’t know about something, she did everything she could to learn about it. Her curiosity about the scientific world knew no bounds.

So, in the face of a terror that couldn’t be defined and was unknowable, she retreated. At least, for now.

Instead, she focused her mind on things that she could deal with. In particular, she was bothered by two things – the first of which was the signal dampeners that the Admiral’s security team had uncovered.

She recalled the Admiral’s frustration in not being able to find the things. There was something about how they would somehow escape detection. Or at least, they hid their own signals too well to be detected.

It nagged at her that an entire security team couldn’t find something so disruptive. It might have some way to protect itself, but absolutely nothing was undetectable.

Well, unless it was Godeater. But these things were nothing like that. These were tangible objects, designed and created by people. If it was made, it could be found.

It wasn’t so much that she was worried for the base’s security. Rather, this was an itch she absolutely needed to scratch. To her, it was a problem that practically screamed to be solved.

So she ended up slapping together a little hand-held sensor to help her find one of the ‘undetectable’ signal dampeners. It was a simple signal sensor, but with a detection amplifier, a small touch display, and a few extra logic circuits slapped on it. She also rewrote its detection algorithm and created a new codeset from scratch.

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As for finishing touches, she fitted a light blue tubular housing over it, and added an ergonomic grip to the bottom. It looked a bit like a fragile club, and somehow matched her grey and blue street outfit rather well.

She decided to field test it right after she finished making it, excited to make any tweaks to it. So she ended up waving it around at everything around her as she walked the streets of the asteroid base.

Every so often, she’d check the little display she attached to it just to see if it was accurate with its readings. There were a few times when she had to adjust it to tighten its capabilities. But it otherwise performed exactly how she wanted it to.

She tuned it not for signal strength, but signal strength fluctuations. As she walked around, the signal strength of everything around her ebbed or strengthened to varying degrees. For the most part, the changes and variations were normal.

For example, the strength of something would increase the closer she got to it. Power transformers certainly behaved like this. They were everywhere in the asteroid, and every single one had the same signal strength.

Similarly, people emitted certain signals – the more active they were, the larger their personal signals became.

But it was the abnormal ones that she kept an eye out.

There were multiple towers all over the base where signals were constantly dampened. It merely emitted a low-level signal that helped muddy all others. Miko noted that the closer she got to one of the towers, the more effective it was.

And though the towers were numerous, they were spaced out far enough that they didn’t always overlap. She had her DI lay out a map for her, and had it highlight a number of sections where their protection was poorest.

If she were to attack the base’s dampening field, she would have planted her counter in those weak points as well.

As she neared the closest gap, her sensor sent her an alert. It detected an abnormal change in ambient signal strength.

It had increased beyond the norm.

She noticed that the power transformers had a signal output slightly greater than what was standard. They were certainly greater than the transformers within the influence of the tower dampeners.

When she arrived at the weakest point of the dampeners’ protection, the general signal strength was nearly double what it should have been.

Miko realized that the dampeners were simply being counteracted by amplifiers. But usually, amplifiers would be easy to find. That is, if they were around normal signals – their own would stand out greatly.

But whatever this was amplified signals of everything else around it. It dawned on her that whatever did this simply hid itself among the signals.

Clever.

Regardless, finding the device was still going to be tough. Needle in a haystack tough.

She quickly looked around her to get her bearings and maybe try to figure out where the amplifier was hiding. She was in a small commercial area. There was a grassy city block in the middle, which was surrounded by a few shops on all surrounding city blocks.

There were all kinds of store fronts, too – clothing, sundries, tools. There were also small eateries as well as a candy store. The whole area was a simple slice of delight in an otherwise routine lifestyle.

Among the row of shops was an electronics sundries store. Just your basic personal devices, for the most part. As she headed closer, her sensor noted that ambient signals hit their peak.

Now she was certain the source was nearby.

As she entered, she was greeted by the smell of electricity and silicon. The walls were lined with simple shelves and the floor had a number of meter-high display cases. All of them were filled with all manner of items, from datapads to wearables to appliances. They were all basic things that could be found in any home or pocket all across the galaxy.

Behind the counter on the other side of the shop was an older woman wearing a simple and professional outfit. She was performing some work on her terminal and looked up with a smile as Miko came in.

But when she saw her customer was just a little girl, she groaned lightly.

Not that Miko noticed, or even cared. She went to the closest device and waved her sensor at it. As with the others, its outgoing signal was sky-high. Way beyond what it was actually capable of.

She went down the line and scanned a few others, and noted that they all behaved similarly.

Out of nowhere, the clerk coughed to get her attention.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Little girl? Yes, this isn’t a toy store, so please try not to play around in here. You’re bothering all of the customers.”

Miko glanced up and smiled at the clerk. She noticed out of the corner of her eyes that the store was virtually empty, save for the two of them.

“Oh, yes, I understand. I am not here to play with anything.”

“Wonderful. Then please stop waving your magic wand around.”

Miko chuckled at her statement. She realized that she simply looked like a child playing with her toys. She was just a teenager, after all. But she quickly did her best to assure the woman.

“Apologies, this is not a toy. I am simply conducting an experiment with signals. Please pay me no mind.”

The woman groaned audibly and rolled her eyes at Miko. She wasn’t the only kid on the asteroid, and was tired of dealing with all of them. They typically went into her store just to play with the devices, but never actually bought anything.

“Listen,” the woman said. “I really am sorry, but I’m not in the mood to play around with you kids today, okay? Since you’re not here to buy anything, just please leave.”

Miko pursed her lips in frustration. This woman wasn’t taking her seriously at all!

“If I buy something, can I continue my work?”

“Fine. If you want to stick around and play for ten minutes, then you have to buy something that’s worth at least a hundred credits. Then you need to get out and play elsewhere.”

Miko didn’t even wait for her to finish her sentence. She had already spotted a device and pointed to it.

“I will be purchasing this one.”

The woman was taken aback.

“Th-that’s a twelve-thousand credit item! Quit joking around and just leave already! If you don’t, I’m going to call military police!”

Miko completely ignored her threat and instead transferred the 12k credits as a purchase through her DI. Her ledger had hundreds of thousands of credits, and this small amount was nothing to her by this point.

“This is a Dynograv Model 56, yes? I will need a number of its internal parts for another experiment. Please have it wrapped up as I will have my drone pick it up in a few hours.”

The woman gawked as the payment came through on her terminal. The little girl had dropped 12k credits like she was buying candy!

How the hell?!

“So now,” Miko continued, “I have purchased something for over 100 credits and expect to continue my work uninterrupted. I will take longer than ten minutes, however. Is this a problem for you?”

The shop clerk shook her head morosely.

Miko then spent the next hour going over every device in the shop, and verified each and every signal. All of them behaved the exact same. Not one was what she was looking for, so she left the store somewhat frustrated.

The neighboring store was another possibility, so she took a step in that direction. However, it didn’t take long until her sensor sent her an alarm.

It noted that the ambient signal strength dipped ever so slightly just as she stepped in front of an alleyway entrance. It became even more pronounced when she went in.

She swept it across everything – some pipes, a little alcove with a rusty old container inside, an electric junction box, and so on. But when she sweeped over a pile of trash, it suddenly dipped. She got closer and sorted through the debris until she found a small tubular bit of junk.

And when she held her sensor up to it, it held a completely zero signal.

She smiled at it. A zero signal was an impossibility. Absolutely everything that existed emitted some level of a signal. Even rocks, though they were incredibly close to zero.

Miko quickly tossed it in one of her shielded pockets, then scanned the area around her. All signals in her immediate area slowly descended, but didn’t reach normality. A frown crossed her face. She was expecting things to normalize after she had put the thing away, but it appeared that there were still more out there.

With a sigh, she re-tuned her sensor, and continued her hunt.

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