Difference between revisions of "Summary:Cytonic"

They crash through the jungle, and M-Bot follows, expressing fear. The pirates notice that the grig feeds on energy, and the beast grows sluggish. Spensa introduces herself and M-Bot, and Chet is disturbed by the fact that Spensa brought an AI into the nowhere. Chet calls M-Bot an abomination, and M-Bot practices insults by calling Chet a noodle-brain. He then asks Spensa to rate his insult from one to ten. Chet offers to be Spensa’s guide in the nowhere for the price of one reality ash per day, the silver dust that is produced by reality icons. Chet tells her about the Path of Elders, a series of the first nowhere portals, left by ancient cytonics, and Spensa tells him that she must follow it.the Theburl grig,with though it should’vethe fallenmelting asleepface, crashes through the frostforest towards them. It chases them, its eyes glowing white. Spensa and Chet break out of the jungle, and before them is the edge of the floating island, only empty air out in front of them.

Spensa follows Chet along the edge of the fragment as the grigburl continues to chase them. M-Bot talks about his emotions to Spensa, who doesn’t reply. Chet leads them towards a close fragment near by, and Spensa has M-Bot go connect his light-line to it. He returns, but the light-line isn’t long enough to reach across. With no other choice and the grigburl right behind them, Spensa and Chet jump towards the other fragment. Spensa grabs on to M-Bot, Chet missing and hanging onto her waist. M-Bot’s acclivity rings aren’t strong enough to keep them in the air, so theySpensa plummethangs brieflyon, butChet thensays arehe stoppedwould anddrop heldif inhe placewas byto M-Bot’smuch light-line.weight since one falling is better than two.M-Bot retracts the light-line, bringing them up and onto the next fragment. Spensa inspects Chet warily, finding it strange and convenient that he happened to find her.

Spensa asks Chet about the nowhere, saying it looks different from when she hyprjumpshyperjumps, and Chet tells her that she normally passed through the lightburst at the center of the nowhere, whereas they are in the belt. He tells her that things from their world, like jungles and oceans leak into the nowhere and form fragments, the floating islands in the belt. He tells her that the Path of Elders contains memories from ancient cytonics, and that he’s never walked the path. He tells her that eventually she’ll have to travel all the way to the lightburst, which is roughly fifty thousand klicks away. He also tells her that she could hypothetically hyperjump home from the lightburst. She asks him about his past, and he says he doesn’t remember his life before the nowhere, just some caverns and old ruins. He says he’s been in the nowhere for around a hundred and seventy years, and that he can make himself not age using his cytonics. Chet jogs off to secure a cave for sleeping, and Spensa has M-Bot do some math to figure out that he crashed on Detritus right around when Chet entered the nowhere. Spensa realizes that Chet is M-Bot’s pilot, and they take off towards the cave.

Spensa leaves Jorgen, and hears Brade communicating with the delvers, speaking for Winzik. He offers to silence the annoying buzzing if the delvers help destroy enemyall cytonics for him. The delvers agree to consider the trade. Spensa drifts off into true sleep.

M-Bot wakes Spensa and Chet hours later, and they cross to the next fragment. There are mysterious markings, and Spensa insists that they mean something, but aren’t a language. M-Bot grows frustrated, and whacks Spensa on the head with his grabberdrone armbody. They find the portal, which is locked, preventing them from getting back to the real world that way. Spensa opens her mind and senses the portals, and accesses the memories within. She sees a fragment being formed over hundreds of years, time being sped up rapidly. Spensa notices that there aren’t any delvers during this time. A dione steps through the illusory portal, then ages and dies, with no way off the fragment. Spensa discovers that cytonics are made when the nowhere leaks into the somewhere. At Spensa’s questioning, M-Bot tells them that the first delvers were documented during the First Human War. Their discussion is interrupted by aan impact shaking their fragment.

Chet and Spensa find a wooden building, and take the doors ofoff their hinges. They make [[Not-ilus|a rough raft]] out of the doors and large nuts, and set sail across a large ocean fragment. A [[garqua]], a sea creature, comes up to their raft, and Spensa names it Gnash the Slaughterer. Using fruit to motivate it, Chet uses Gnash to let them traverse the ocean fragment faster, having the creature tow them along. They reach land, and Chet tells Spensa that the Broadsider base will pass by the next day. Chet tells her that when he had a ship, he tried to fly towards the lightburst, but lost all of his memories in the attempt, slowly losing himself the closer he got. Spensa thinks about the frightful passing of time in the nowhere, and drifts off to sleep.

Peg gives Spensa their best ship, and Spensa uploads M-Bot to it. Chet doesn’t want his own ship, preferring to stay in the ship with Spensa. At Peg’s request, Spensa helps teach Cutlass Flight some formation exercises to help improve their group flying. She helpedhelps them practice working in pairs and using their IMPIMPs. They exchange casual banter as they fly, reminding Spensa of time with her friends. Peg explains more about her past, and tells Spensa that the Superiority uses non-lethal destructors as well. They come up upon their destination, a fragment covered in ruins, and the location of the next step in the Path of Elders.

They arrive back at base in the midst of a full firefight, and M-Bot highlights enemy ships on Spensa’s display. The enemy pirates are from the [[Jolly Roger Faction]], led by Gremm. Spensa goes for the weaker fighters first to prevent her flight from being overwhelmed. Spensa deals with the enemy ships with relative ease, surpassing the enemies in skill greatly. She shoots down three enemy ships in under five minutes. She uses her IMP to givergive Cutlass Flight easy targets. Gremm chases after her, and they engage in a fierce duel in the air. Gremm prevails, scoring several hits on Spensa’s ship and locking it up. Spensa laughs, excited by the thrill of the fight. Chet wakes up, having lost consciousness during the dogfight. By the end of the battle, Spensa has four kills and three assists, astounding Peg. With the Jolly Rogers still soundly defeated and Gremm impressed with Spensa’s flying, Gremm agrees to officially duel Spensa the next day.

While Spensa sleeps, she tries to cytonically reach out to Jorgen as she did before. She senses something blocking her however, and instead finds Winzik sitting on a throne, and Brade speaks to her. Brade says she’s been blocking Spensa from reaching out cytonically during her dreams. Winzik orders Brade to trap Spensa’s mind, but Brade says she doubts she can do it. Brade attacks Spensa with her mind, and Spensa fights back. Jorgen’s mind joins her, and together force Brade away. Spensa talks to Jorgen, again catching each other up on the past weeks’ events. Jorgen leaves, and Winzik speaks to the delvers through Brade. He tells them that cytonics like Spensa are out of countrolcontrol and loud. Spensa realizes that Brade had provoked her to make a lot of cytonic noise that would anger the delvers. The delvers say they can deal with the cytonics on their own, but Winzik convinces them otherwise. The delvers agree to Winzik’s deal.

As Hesho flies, Spensa notices that the delver is still using Hesho’s skills. Many of the other ships have been locked up, and the other ships have agreed to a temporary truce because of the dangerous battlefield. As Spensa chases Hesho, she opens a direct line to Hesho’s ship. She acts as if theirthey're in training, ordering the flight to fall in line and call roll. Instinctively, Hesho stops, the old habits drilled into him being too difficult to ignore. Spensa shoots him down, locking up his ship. Spensa approaches his ship, then exits her ship and jumps onto the wing of Hesho’s ship. The delver possessing Hesho is afraid of Spensa, saying that being around Spensa corrupts and changes them. The delvers tell Spensa that if she doesn’t pass beyond Surehold, they will strike up a truce with Spensa and the other cytonics, ignoring Winzik’s deal. They’ll leave Spensa’s friends alone. The delver stops possessing Hesho, leaving him very confused.