The Record of Unusual Creature

To be frank, using the local universe channel to post an announcement was pretty much the same as a school broadcast system. The channel was mostly about lost items anyway. Having that in mind, Hao Ren had managed to wade through the flood of messages without much issue and proceeded to upload the photos into the channel.

Luckily, Hao Ren came prepared to The Plane of Dreams. When he was in the ship, he had taken plenty of pictures both of the exterior and the interior of the ship. There was even a short clip of Lily swiping her claws at a crack on the ship. The information he had garnered would allow the civilization spheres to narrow down the origin of the craft.

By then, the channel had more and more participants, even including the agents and heralds from different areas and civilization spheres. Hao Ren found it rather easy to distinguish them apart. Not only because there were specialized suffixes at the back of their names, the way they spoke was vastly different from one another. Most civilization heralds spoke with a very proper, traditional and sometimes deadpan manner. This was expected as they were the representatives of their civilization spheres and most of them wre old pen pushers. Such was the way to communicate in their line of work especially when serving a gigantic trans-galatic empire like the Xiling Empire. The agents on the other hand, were a very casual lot. Thinking back, Hao Ren realized that there seemed to be a common theme behind those Raven 12345 picked for the job… it’s that all of them were bloody jokers on the same wavelength as her…

Such irony, that by criticizing his superior, Hao Ren had to acknowledge the fact that he was a bloody joker.

The MDT was busy helping out with vetting the messages that were going through the public channels. Some parts of the channels were administered by the Empire properly, some of them were under the local civilization sphere’s own data network. A small network probably covered a stellar system and a big one probably encompassed an entire galaxy. Each network was built from all sorts of different technology from hyper lightspeed communication satelites to magical telephatic spires and they were the pride of the civilization spheres that owned them.

More and more responses came from the data networks by then. They were replies from the various spheres to Hao Ren’s posting. Some of the more advanced or faster ones had already sent out search orders across their network to aid in the search. The horrible photographs that Hao Ren took had spread across the entire universe…

Among them was one of Lily’s propeller tail.

Hao Ren had a dream long ago. It was to publish a book. A way to let his writings spread across the masses and that would do his family proud. But, his language teacher had solemnly told him that two things impeded his dreams of being a prolific writer. They were his left and right hands, which were bereft of any writing skills. Hao Ren’s dream was shattered that very moment.

Nonetheless, he realized that his dreams came true in ways far more than what he could have previously imagined: His posting had not only disseminated to the public, it was to the whole universe and it was simultaneously translated into about 26,000 different languages. By the next day, his posting would have been disseminated even further. It would appear on print and posters across the universe.

“Looks like this won’t take too long?” Hao Ren looked at the raucous scene unfolding in the data network. He could scarcely believe that he had such an ability to draw so much attention and he had high hopes to settle the issue regarding the spaceship in a jiffy. Hell, if things went well enough, he could get it done before sending Hilda back.

The MDT pondered for a moment before pouring down on Hao Ren’s parade. “I suppose we will still need a few days. Don’t let the activity on the network fool you. The universe is a wide, wide place after all. And some civilization’s hyper lightspeed communication isn’t all that advanced. Sides, the ship twe ran into seems like a mass-produced workboat and may be used very widely in certain star systems. Not many races would be keeping records of such mass-produced ships. They may take a few days before they are able to gather information from every civilian starport, including those beyond the range of the communication relays. They will then need to sift through the information before sending it to you. That said, nine times out of ten, the stuff you get are worthless duds.”

Hao Ren simply nodded. He did not know how hyper lightspeed communication worked but, he knew that it was one of the most important basics for a civilization to enter the stars properly. For many races that were new to space travel, this was still very high end technology. At the same time, two messages marked as important popped up in front of Hao Ren. They were from the Dan-Dwyn and Kerbal Civilization Spheres. Both spheres had records in their database about spacecrafts that were very similiar to the one Hao Ren submitted. Dan-Dwyns’ herald left a comment that read “…Checked the purchase records and found that 300 of these ships were purchased through official channels 50 years ago. At the same time, there were larger models available. We have no records on the motive of purchase…”

The Kerbals had even bigger purchase records. They were a young race with an insatiable thirst for space travel as well as knowledge of the subject. They had a rather relaxed regulation regarding civilian space travel. One of the customs officers, after scouring their records, had reported that over a thousand odd ships of a similar looking model were purchased for civilian use. Perhaps even more.

The data network server had compared the various reports, which came from all corners and determined that only these two spheres had purchased this ship model in significant amounts. Thus, leaving them the most probable source of the ship.

And the waiting game started for further information.

Hao Ren had also uploaded the photos of the small greenlings in the ship. However, frankly, it was of limited use. An interstellar ship would have crews which consisted of races from all over the place. There was even a case of a local captain having almost a hundred crew members. As such, those greenlings would not actually tell very much.

It was simply a pity that the ship’s databank had been wrecked or else, it would have made the search of its origins much easier.

Hao Ren also pulled out the ‘Sea Urchin Combat Bot’ from his Dimensional Pocket. Yes, it was that tentacle-armed, metallic sphere. There was plenty of space left in the basement after all. He let the MDT circle the sphere to take some pictures to add to his posting, hoping to find out the creator of the object. It did not take long for the replies to come. “The ‘Sea Urchin Combat Bot’ is not a military grade item in any of the civilization spheres. It seems like a security bot made by a private security company. Finding its origins would be even more difficult.”

…. Such was the scene on a galatic stage. The noise and ruckus was like your local night market.

“Hur, hur. Lets go back up to wait. We won’t be getting any new updates any time soon.” The MDT made an almost human sigh as it finished compiling all the data they had gathered that day.

“Yeah. Do monitor the channels for me. Let me know if there’s anything important. That ship at the bottom of the Blood Lake just makes me uneasy.” Hao Ren said as he nodded. He then turned his sights to the ‘coffin’ beside him. “Say… when can Hilda get out of there? She’s been in there for almost…an hour already?”

“Two hours plus already,” the MDT replied. “We’ll have to wait regardless. Scanning an interloper is the most tedious. Not only do we need to scan her details, we have to keep matching with the records further up. Sometimes it’ll take a short while, sometimes it’ll take a few hours.”

Hao Ren was stunned. Time flew when he was so focused on his work.

Thus, both him and the MDT patiently waited beside Hilda’s ‘coffin’. In between, Y’zaks came down to check on them. Finally, just before Hao Ren was about to doze off, a loud ding came from the sleeping pod. Hilda was sound… uh.. no, wide awake.

The Elven Queen had gotten up from the sleeping pod and looked at Hao Ren curiously. “Is the scan complete?”

Before Hao Ren could say anything, the MDT started muttering. “Done, all done. Let’s go up. We’ve been waiting for you for a good part of the day.”

Hilda simply blinked. “That long? It felt just like a moment to me.”

“Almost three hours. Any longer and it would be dinner time already.” Hao Ren said as he spread open his hands.

Hilda voiced a curt “Oh!” and did not ask further. She knew that her knowledge of these advanced alien technology was next to zero. Adjusting her crumpled shirt as she went along, she asked, “When can I go home?”

Hao Ren nudged the MDT for it to check. The Space Administration already had Hilda’s name in their record and her status was marked as ‘Processing’ and a remark was left, saying a reply would be given in two business days (Imperial Standard Time). He passed on the information to give Hilda some sort of relief but, he did not know how relieved she would be from hearing that.

After three hours of busywork in the basement, it was almost dark when Hao Ren got out of there.

The daylight during winter was always short. It was barely 5.00pm and a golden ray of the setting sun was already visible in the living room. Wuyue had placed a basin on the tea table right where the sun was shining. In it was half a tub of water and a big rock. Lil Pea was lying lazily on the rock, sunbathing. Her already shiny tail glistened under the evening sun. Almost like a Bonsai.

Beside the tea table, Lily and Vivian were squabbling as usual.

Hao Ren still had plenty on his mind as he saw them at each other’s throats again. His anger rose. “What’s wrong with you two again?”

Lily quickly pulled out her twin claws. “Battie’s saying that she wants to name my weapons. The ice one, as Frostmourne.”

“Isn’t that nice?” Hao Ren did not even understand why they were fighting in the first place.

Lily’s ears shuddered all of a sudden. “But, she even called the fire one Flamejoy for whatever reason…”

“….”

Hao Ren only managed to gather his wits again after a while. “Bloody hell, just how free are you two?”

Vivian was still unhappy about the episode. “I was being serious. If she doesn’t like it she doesn’t have to use it. What’s with her claiming that I’m insulting her wolven ancestors…”

Hao Ren just waved his hands resignedly at the two, signalling that he had no mood to get into their arguments. After looking at Vivian for a while, something popped up in his mind. “Oh, right. Vivian, I have something to ask of you…”