#Lore24 – Entry #360 – Sci-Fi Month IV #25 – Looking Toward the Demon Sector
Transcribed From the Personal Recording Implant of Andra Ganim, Chronicler of the Codex Infinitum
AG: “There does seem to have been a definite increase in interest in the Demon Sector over the last few years, certainly. You are saying that it is the will of these draconic souls, such as yourself, that draws people toward it…why?”
RV: “That is the big question. I have yet to uncover the exact reason, and may not in your lifetime, or that of your great-grandchildren, even. It is a vast region of space, far larger than the seventy-two stars that gave it its name in the old days, during our earliest surveys of the region through the Demon Barrier using the crude equipment of the age. Even I did not realize it at first, but I had a developed a growing interest in the area following the uptick in dragon-souled individuals I had managed to locate, and only put the pieces together later. The most obvious theory is that there lies something within the Demon Sector that we need to know about, something of vital importance, perhaps to the entirety of our galaxy, even.”
AG: “Do you believe that perhaps the ancient dragons were responsible for forming the Demon Barrier itself?”
RV: “Perhaps; their power is undeniably far beyond what even I have obtained since my awakening, and remains my ultimate goal, of course. Perhaps the remaining true dragons lie at the heart of the Demon Sector, or perhaps the next revolutionary clue along the trail that will ultimately lead us to them. It is only supposition, but I theorize that our continued interest in dragons, the pervasiveness of their iconography adopted by various peoples throughout history, still prevalent in popular culture today, influenced by their many ruins, is something of an inborn trait hardcoded into our very essences. It is simply stronger in some of us, those who possess particularly strong souls. Or perhaps there is a coming awakening of said souls on a grand scale; I simply do not have enough evidence to say for certain.”
AG: “What evidence have you seen that would lead you to your supposition that the draconic souls are awakening?”
RV: “It’s mostly based upon a curious series of events that I have only recently begun to piece together over the last century or so. First was the sudden increase in available test subjects across members of the multiple humanoid races within civilized space; I went from approximately one subject per twenty years, roughly, to suddenly collecting four in one year, then ten the next, and at least twenty per year after that, with each subsequent generation showing more and more of the stronger souls, those peculiar individuals who displayed great leadership ability. You may have heard that DSM had taken a rather forceful stance on acquiring various smaller companies recently, their owners, CEOs, whatever, simply being paid off and vanishing. Well, I know exactly where they went.
Secondly, there was the discovery of a particular unique artifact by a mostly insignificant mining company near the world of Ruvale, obtained from one of their asteroid mining operations in the areas beyond the habitable zone of the system. That artifact was called UCSD-0001.”
AG: “Was this related to the Ruvale Blockade incident?”
RV: “It was, in fact, the entire point of the Ruvale Blockade. Once the existence of the object had been brought to my attention, I initiated the takeover of the company immediately and had intended to seize the object even before the documents had been submitted. As fast as my agents were in reaching Ruvale, they were still too late to lay hands on the object, however, for the CEO of the company was not only an idiot, not realizing the value of what he had found, but he carelessly allowed it to fall into the hands of a jewel thief of all things. My agents and additional security forces attempted retrieval, but the locals proved far too willing to aid the thief and her allies in hiding from us. So, with that status update, I would blockade the planet until I had what I wanted.
Unfortunately, as fast as I had my forces moving, the thief was faster in obtaining passage off Ruvale. The blockade nearly worked, though; had we been perhaps an hour sooner, we would have had the artifact immediately. As it worked out, though, it had fallen into the hands of a broker on Sentinel Prime, which then sold it to me once she had obtained it. In the end, little of value was lost in the endeavor, and the locals were reminded that DSM is not to be trifled with.”
AG: “What did you discover once you finally had this object? What was it?”
RV: “UCSD…Unidentified Crystalline Storage Device. This was the first object of its kind that I had ever come across in my many years of exploration. Based upon the data from the mining company’s records, the asteroid which it was mined from was not native to the Ruvale system, had drifted into the mix from somewhere beyond its reaches, for its composition did not match anything else in the surrounding area, even showed signs of intense heat damage and a lingering radiation signature that, for them, was of unknown origin. For me, it was quite obvious where that radiation signature came from: the Demon Barrier.
The company’s initial tests upon this object revealed its nature, as the moniker they gave it indicates. A form of crystalline storage device that we had yet to encounter or create for ourselves and possessed of microscopic draconic runes upon its surface. This object is reminiscent of arcane storage matrices from the old days but possesses a much more densely packed structure, allowing for a much greater capacity. The arcane school of transmutation, specifically of “storing” objects inside these matrices as we have done in the past, and some of us still do, is essentially digitizing the objects and placing them in a static, digitized state until we call them out again.
Have you ever thought it curious how much of what we know about the methods of manipulating the raw magical essence, magic, resembles modern coding procedures? How curious indeed beings like certain kitsune are able to magically manipulate data, their curious form of hacking? I could go into great detail about the nature of this relationship, but for now, I’ll refrain.
UCSD-0001, when I and my top AR&D members began to study it and access what it contained, revealed an amount of data roughly comparable in size to the entirety of the DSM corporate archives throughout the company’s existence, an unprecedented amount of data. We have only scratched the surface of this object, so to speak, though it possesses a hardness greater than diamond, reinforced with protective magic. We have not even managed to date the artifact yet, in fact.”