Dododex

ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion

Ultimus Chapter 18: Questions and Answers

Andrew stood there in front of these three. Were people always this strange and curious? He sure felt like it was true, but he wasn’t sure if feelings were getting rubbed off from one another. But it was strange that they didn’t know how much time had passed. And what were these ‘Arks’ that they spoke about? It was all confusing and giving him a headache, but he needed answers now.

“You didn’t know how long you all been in these Arks? What are these things and why are you all up there?” Andrew asked, the one woman looked at him. Her hair was jet black and her face stern and her stare cold to him. She was about average height yet lean.

“What year are you from?” She said, Andrew gave her a confused look.

“What does that have to do with anything? All I need to tell you is that I’m from the Terran Federation and my birth year.” He said snippy.

“Okay, then Fed. Do you know about the two projects that the Feds and URE were involved with?”

“Project Atlas and Project Prometheus? Yeah, who doesn’t. I wanted to work on Prometheus with my parents.” Andrew answered. She nodded.

“Okay, well our group didn’t know before they met me. I worked on Project Atlas or what we called it. The Ark Initiative.” She said.

“Okay, but what is it? What is the Ark Initiative?” Andrew asked, she huffed and scowled.

“Let me finish alright? In layman's terms, they’re lifeboats. They contain every form of life from every era. The URE believed that these ‘lifeboats’ could be used to reseed the Earth. They were supposed to drop after a few hundred years, just to let the Earth recover from the Element War and the element that was everywhere. But if a thousand years have passed, then something happened to stop it from happening naturally.” She said,

“Could it have anything to do with these zombie dinosaurs?”

“What?” She asked, Andrew looked over at one of the bodies lying on the ground and pointed to it. The woman with the jet-black hair walked up to it. She knelt and observed it for a moment. She seemed very curious about the corpse. Andrew walked up to see what she was doing. She reached her hand out and then hesitated before committing herself to touching its leathery skin. Nothing happened, she sighed in relief and then focused her attention on the vine-like material. This was the first time Andrew had ever got a good look at the stuff. She began touching the vine material and scraping at it. Flaking off black and magenta material. Andrew looked at the material and felt that he recognized it in that form.

“Is that-”

“Element.” She whispered, though not quite enough for Andrew to not hear.

“But, Element had no signs of doing this before? Even the war sights were said to only have veins growing in polluted Element like the flakes we see here.”

“Element Erica, like the material we use in Tek?” Paul asked,

“Yeah, Tek gear runs on Element. How do you know that?” Andrew asked back.

“Because we’ve used Tek before. And this is Element. No doubt about it. Though it seems to be a more unstable form than normal.”

“But how? Element doesn’t do this.” Andrew said,

“It’s been a thousand years right?” Erica asked

“Yeah, at least that long.” Andrew confirmed.

“Well, there you go. You already see how much it spread across the Earth from the war fields of our era. So the Element could have easily changed. It learned, it evolved.” She said, everyone looked at her confused for a moment.

“But I thought… is Element alive?” Paul asked.

“No, but a professor I had in graduate school said that Element was an element of its own. He studied Unstable Element for several years and noticed that it has some uncanny qualities to the brains of living organisms. He even theorized that it may be able to gain sentience with how advanced the material can become and how mailable and versatile the substance is. And with it being able to be a near-infinite power source at a large enough scale. It could live forever.” Erica explained.

“And you thought you could just wait up in space until it disappeared?” Andrew said,

“Look, at the time it was just a theory at the time. We didn’t actually know. Now that we do know. It’s imperative that we reseed our Ark to Earth.” Erica said, Andrew scoffed at this.

“Why? It’ll die as soon as it touches the Earth. Either by the Element as you said or by these monsters.” He added.

“It won’t. At least it shouldn’t. The bottoms and sides of the Arks are encased with a Refined Element, Element that can’t get corrupted by the raw, corrupted Element. And the creatures will have a very difficult time getting through the natural barriers. We designed them to detour humans from running to the station’s force barrier. But once those disappear after the reseeding, the natural barriers will become safety barriers for those inside.” Erica said, Andrew shook his head.

“But why? Why do we need to bring it down? If it isn’t time-” “ Because theirs only six of us and we need more of us to find how we can eliminate the Element. And the proper reseed process could take a thousand years more. We need help to bring them down.” Erica said,

“I don’t like the sound of this. We should diagnose the problem beforehand.” Andrew stated. Erica looked at him with distaste.

“Lucky for us, we don’t have to follow your way.” Erica said bluntly.

“Erica!” Paul said, she looked over at Paul with a stubborn expression.

“I’m just saying the fact that you are our Our leader Paul and all I advise is that we reseed just the Ark we just came from. That way minimal damage is done if anything happens and at the same time we end this Element issue at a greater pace with more numbers.” Erica said, Paul shuffled his step as he thought it through. His face was concerned.

“You sure you can do this without killing everyone on there? And you are sure that this won’t be a death sentence for everything on the Ark?” Paul asked.

“I’m pretty sure the natural borders will keep them safe. And with Syla’s doing the heavy with the tech support on reseeding the Ark and me there to give coords and talk him through some of it. I can guarantee it’ll come down safely.” Erica said, Paul nodded in deep thought.

“I think…” he said before sighing, “… I think we’ll go ahead and make steps toward this plan. But if there are any signs of danger or we see any possibility of risk. We go with his plan.” Paul said, Erica’s face was more in shock. She huffed before she turned and whistled her dinosaur. The animal slowly came down from the ridge it was at and stopped directly in front of her. It looked similar to Tracy back at home. But this one looked way more like a Triceratops than she did. Erica walked next to the dinosaur and mounted a saddle that was on its back.

“Well I don’t know about you, but I am beat. It was nice to meet you sir but I think it’s time we head back to base.” She said, while he knew she was trying to get away from him as fast as possible. He was thankful, he wanted to go home, he felt horrible for everything he did and didn’t think he deserved being saved though he was grateful for it. But the blonde-haired woman looked at her with confusion.

“Hvorfor inviterer vi ham ikke til baseleiren vår? Han har ingen andre med seg Erica.” She said, Erica looked at her like she said something horrible.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I do though, Andrew. Would you like to come to our base camp for a couple of days?” Paul asked, Andrew stood there in an awkward position and was silent. He wasn’t sure what to say, his mind wanted to say not today but his mouth moved faster than his mind.

“Sure, ah- yeah. Just ah- let me grab my bow and knife.” He blurted, regretting almost as he spoke. Paul smiled.

“Great! Would you like to ride passenger on my mount or Erica’s?” He said smiling, Erica looked at him with irritation.

“Actually, I think if it’s all the same with you. I’ll walk myself to your camp.” Andrew said, Paul nodded with a kind smile on his face.

“That’s fine, Freya didn’t bring anything and she doesn’t like to ride as a passenger so she can keep you company. We leave as soon as you're ready.” He said,

“Thank you.” Andrew said as he walked off to grab his stuff.

“You're going to love it and I think you’ll get along great with one of the guys there.” Paul said,

~

Inside the heart of Sanctuary. All was peaceful, inside animals were roaming, hunting, and droids protecting the city from the corrupted creatures outside but somewhere along the way had lost their main purpose. Now seeing all things that haven’t been in Sanctuary for who knows how long as their enemies. Inside a particular building in Sanctuary was a base camp for some survivors. Where several creatures stood around, some grazing, some sleeping, some observing.

And what they were observing was a man. The man had short red curly and was not all that tall. He labored over a box he found in a car that he had been working on for the past few hours. Messing with wires and paying attention to a screen on the box. He had the box connected to a generator that the others had made. As he worked on it, he shocked himself by touching a live wire.

“Ah!!! Mmmooottthheeerrr… brother, sister, Father!!!” He screamed out in pain at the top of his lungs. Before realizing that the person who was also left in camp was still asleep and he shushed himself. He really didn’t want to wake up that guy. Putting his fingers that he shocked in his mouth as he whimpered. He looked back at the wires and computer motherboard inside. Everything looked ready to go. He sighed to himself

“Please work.” He said to himself, it had been so long. He turned it on and a blue light came on the screen. And a menu popped up. The man was ecstatic. He started flipping through the menu and reached the page he wanted. He turned up the volume on the box and pressed the button to start. Almost immediately the box came to life with music rhythm and beats that had been so long since the man had heard. It brought tears to his face as the lyrics began to play.

“We're no strangers to love

You know the rules and so do I

A full commitment's what I'm thinking of

You wouldn't get this from any other guy.” It played and the man began to bob his head to the song and began to sing along and dance horribly to the next part of lyrics.

“I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling

Gotta make you understand” he sang as he danced over to his next project. He sighed with success as he looked at it.

“Alright, let’s get down to business… to defeat the Huns.” He said as he walked over to the box, turned down the music, and grabbed his gear to work on his next project.