Dan cautiously crept up to the counter, where, in addition to a keyboard and mouse, he found another device with a circular groove for the ring. It was apparently a reader that was visibly carelessly connected, because you could see how the individual small wires leading from it were tied together in a larger braid and led through a drilled hole into the counter. With zero expectation, Dan inserted the ring into the reader. He was all the more startled when the screen in front of him turned on in response. Dan stepped back a few steps to get a better look at what was on it. There was a static image of a blue glowing M in a circle, and something was loading underneath. With every additional 10% completed, something in the room lit up and turned on. First, small lights on the ceiling, then the lowered table lit up. The concrete walls were backlit with blue light from LED strips on the floor glued close to the wall. The display cases also lit up, so it was now easy to see what was actually inside them. Dan now saw that they were some kind of combat suits, or perhaps androids? A very strange thing, and each one was completely different.
The whole room continued to fill with white-blue light. Then the large lights on the ceiling also lit up, which then completely illuminated the room. A hologram of an unfinished project now appeared on the lowered table. It was something that resembled a hovercraft and a motorcycle at the same time. Many loose holographic components were scattered around the thing. It was labeled Project M.O.P.S. (Malý Osobní Podvodní Stroj) - Small Personal Underwater Vehicle.
Dan shifted his gaze back to the screen, where the loading had just finished at that moment. Suddenly, the glass of the display case behind him shattered. Dan spun around lightning-fast and frantically backed away as far as he could into the corner of the room.
One of those suits was now walking towards him. This one was black, shiny, and also smooth. It was a robotic figure of a tall and broad bodybuilder, around whose fake muscles thin blue lines glowed. Only on second glance could it be seen that it was actually made up of many smaller parts that fit together perfectly, and perhaps each of them could even open on its own on demand. With the volume it occupied, it could hold a lot of interesting equipment.
"Hello Dan..." a voice came from the suit, and on its blank, smooth head, a blue, moving imitation of his great-grandfather's old face lit up.
"Don't be afraid, it's me, only this is now my... new substitute form," said the suit, which now apparently had the consciousness of his great-grandfather Michal loaded inside. Michal in the suit immediately began to examine himself. He stretched out his right arm towards the floor, so as not to destroy anything, and then the top of his wrist opened and one of the many hidden components slid out. Probably something to do with weapons, it had 3 different openings next to each other.
"Oh, so that's how it's going to work. Good. That's actually better than I thought," Michal remarked.
Then he spoke to the stunned Dan: "You know, for you it's been 5 years, but for me, it's like 3 minutes ago. My memory goes back to the moment just before it ended. So unfortunately, I don't have the answers to questions about life and death. This here is just my big backup, which I created a few minutes before my death using that ring and the nanobots in my blood, which scanned the state of every cell in my brain and turned it into computer code. So that's what I am now, code inside this far more powerful body that I made for myself some time ago. Thanks a lot for your help, but it doesn't end there."
Then Michal gave Dan a pause to take it all in. Dan collected himself from the corner of the room and slowly began to circle Michal's robotic body. He knocked on his back, and indeed his hand hit a piece of machinery. "Yeah, solid piece of tech," Michal remarked. "There's a lot inside this..." Michal continued and said, "Watch out, step aside." Dan took three steps back. The entire bodybuilder-like shell opened in all sorts of ways, revealing a large mechanical structure inside, around which various devices hung on small robotic arms. "My new skeleton and organs. But because I'm only kept alive by electricity and a computer, I could leave the space free for better things, so all of this is actually just gadgets," Michal explained to Dan.
"That's unbelievable," Dan finally managed to say.
"You're almost starting to get jealous?" Michal tried to prompt him cheerfully.
"Well, maybe. But… no, I'd miss my senses," Dan finally assessed.
"I understand that. Smell and taste are good, and I don't have those anymore. But otherwise, the rest is far better. For example, I can see you even now; it only cost me two extra photochips. I even have zoom, which I'm looking forward to. Hearing is a similar story, and I also have echolocation available now. Another upgrade. And as for my hands, well, you've seen them, the hydraulics inside do their job well. I even have machine touch. It's not a complete miracle like the rest, but you can recognize shape and pressure."
"I-I don't know what to say," Dan just let out, still speaking to Michal's back.
Michal closed himself up and turned to Dan. "But I have plenty to say. Come on, I'm not done with this," Michal told him.
"How… how did you do all this?" Dan began as he walked back in front of Michal to look him in the face.
"Money. I'll get to that. But first, I'll show you why I kept the land across the street, even though everyone thought I was crazy, that there could have been nice plots there," Michal said and walked over to the bare concrete wall on the left side of the room.
Michal rhythmically and gently knocked on it. It sounded, however, like he was knocking on metal and not concrete. Some kind of camouflage disappeared, and a simple iron door appeared in the wall. "There's never enough security," Michal said and entered the door.
"And what the hell kind of sorcery is that?" Dan blurted out.
"Oh, please," Michal replied and went inside.
Behind the door, a small, elongated, and slightly flattened hexagonal hangar awaited them. In the middle of it stood a small spaceship on some kind of rail.
At first glance, it looked like a white pill that someone had put into a pencil sharpener from both sides and started sharpening.
Michal took the floor again: "Now I'm going to be a bit like Morpheus. Okay?"
"Who?"
"Never mind..." he said and became serious: "What if I told you that aliens are real and probably everything you've heard about them is at least partially true. Once again. They are real, and there are a lot of them. This ship is functional and was made on Earth using knowledge from aliens. … And I was lucky enough to be a part of it. That's where the money, knowledge, and technology came from. Half of the components in this suit were created by humanizing alien technology. The ugly truth is that we are not the smartest in the universe, and at the time I was involved in all of this, Earth was a place to go for cheap raw materials and labor. Well, then two Earthlings learned far more than anyone could have imagined, and things changed. It was me and my colleague Veronika. That's why I stand by the fact that knowledge is power, because it really gave us a lot of power. More inside, I'm going to get it up and running."
Michal moved to the back of the hangar while Dan silently admired the beauty and some kind of alienness of the vessel. He slowly walked closer and couldn't believe his own eyes. He couldn't say anything, he just experienced his presence in the vicinity of the advanced ship. The ship was surprisingly small, only 6 meters long.
Michal, standing nearby, noticed his interest: "Just take a good look at it. I'll tell you something about it in the meantime. Okay?"
"Yeah..." Dan replied, hypnotized by the ship.
"This is a TAC. Transport Attack Craft. Specifically, this is its three-and-a-half generation, T3.5, because I've improved a few things compared to the regular T3s. The interesting thing is that this type of ship flies on a reactor that can also be recharged. Like a normal battery. For flight in the atmosphere, the main intake is used. In simplified terms, the air passing through the intake slots in the front of the ship is ionized and accelerated, thus giving the ship thrust. The thrust then creates a vacuum in front of the ship, which helps to suck in more air in front of the ship. To simplify, I call it intake, but it's a bit more complicated. It's actually the principle of an ion engine, which probably doesn't mean anything to you. Basically, the entire hull of the ship becomes one big engine at the moment. The air is sucked in by a total of 4 slots, which are independently closable. This allows the ship to ascend, descend, and turn. If the atmosphere is thin or too windy, these are folded wings on the sides," and he pointed to a spot from the center of the ship to its end. From the center of the ship, a large, but not very noticeable, break in the ship's plating in the shape of a folded wing stretched backwards and upwards.
"For space flight, it then uses two engines tucked in on the sides, operating on the principle of a spiral engine. In their case, the ship is pushed by ions accelerated in an electromagnetic field to almost the speed of light, which gives them mass that they can then push into the ship," and he pointed again. In the large folded wing was an elongated and rearward-sloping hexagonal cutout. From there, the mentioned engines apparently extended.
Dan had meanwhile slowly walked up to the front of the ship. The pilot's window covered almost the entire front of the ship, only at the bottom on the sides did it have to make way for something like two pairs of retracted barrels of some kind of weapons with large reflectors right next to them. Further to the sides, in the beveled part of the ship, was the large circular slot for air intake.
Suddenly, a chill went through Dan. He suddenly lost all warmth, his chest tightened, his lungs seemed to contract in a spasm, restricting the air supply, and at the same time, his hands began to tremble. He turned pale and felt like he was going to die. He was starting to suffocate, and his heart was pounding and racing as if a heart attack was coming for him. With a big gasp, he managed to say:
"It's real. It's... it's real." He was in shock. Then, completely desperate and terrified of his condition, he called out to Michal: "Great-grandpa... !"
Michal added understandingly, as if it were completely normal and expected: "Yes. It's real. And don't worry, calm down, nothing's wrong with you. I'm one big hospital with the data I have. It may seem to you that you're dying. That you're starting to suffocate. Believe me, that's not the case, it's just an exaggerated reaction of the body. An overblown automated mechanism from prehistoric times. It's trying to pump oxygen into your body for flight or fight. But if you don't do either of those and breathe just as excessively, you'll disrupt the natural level of CO2 in your body, you'll feel sick, and you'll pass out for a while. So even though you feel the urge, breathe as normally as possible, you won't suffocate. This is also one of the reasons why this is kept secret. Tell some grandmother about this, and she'll have a real heart attack from it. In your case, your body is just trying to convince you of that. You're just having a… panic or anxiety attack. I don't know the difference right now. It's no wonder. Although you're consciously trying to understand all of this, your subconscious is completely fucked up by all of this, and quite seriously, it's completely normal, who wouldn't be. The best thing for this is to distract your attention. Which you'll hopefully get soon. It looks like everything is holding up after those 5 years. Even the water pumps responded to my command for automatic cleaning."
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