Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2061: Sunset

Ning and Jason left their room a short while after dropping off their bags and followed the signs posted along the corridor walls toward the station’s cafeteria.

It was smaller than the one at the academy and considerably quieter, with only a few dozen tables arranged beneath low ceilings. The food was simple, mostly reconstituted grains and a thick, salty stew.

Once they had finished eating, they wandered into a communal area farther down the same corridor, a wide room furnished with low couches, a few tables, and a large display screen showing information about the station and the planet outside.

A handful of other cadets had already settled there, talking quietly in small groups or simply sprawling on the couches with their eyes half-closed, and Ning and Jason found a pair of seats near one of the walls.

They stayed there for a while.

Jason read through the station information on the display with mild interest, occasionally pointing out details about the life support system that he seemed to find more fascinating than anyone else in the room would have, and Ning listened, asking a question here and there whenever Jason seemed to want one.

Eventually, Jason let out a long breath and rubbed at his eyes.

"I think I’m going to sleep."

"Go ahead," Ning said. "I’ll be back later."

Jason nodded and left.

Ning remained seated for a few minutes longer before deciding that he had no particular interest in sleeping. He stood and left the communal area, choosing a direction more or less at random, and began walking through the parts of the station that the cadets had been permitted to enter.

He was careful not to wander anywhere he was not supposed to be. The rules the station official had given them on arrival were still fresh in everyone’s mind, and Ning had no wish to cause trouble for Lorna or the other instructors over something as unimportant as curiosity. Still, the permitted areas covered a fair amount of space, and he found them interesting enough on their own.

His path eventually took him along a long corridor whose outer wall was lined with wide observation windows, thick panes of reinforced material set deep into the station’s frame, looking out across the surface of Jalun.

Ning slowed his pace and then stopped entirely, turning to face the view.

The landscape stretched out before him in long, rolling ridges and broad plains, still streaked with the same deep reds and pale yellows he had seen from orbit, though from the ground, the colors looked richer and softer than they had from above. Shadows were growing long across the terrain, stretching out from every ridge and boulder as the distant sun sank toward the horizon.

Above it all, the sky had turned pink.

Ning looked at it more carefully and realized that the station official’s warning had been slightly misleading.

There was an atmosphere out there. It was thin, far thinner than anything a human could survive in, and it held no oxygen that anyone could breathe, but it was there all the same, a faint veil of gas clinging to the planet’s surface and scattering the sunlight just enough to paint the sky in those soft colors.

He found that he liked the view more because of it.

"Enjoying the view?"

Ning turned his head and found Lorna walking up beside him. She had changed out of her formal instructor’s uniform into a simpler set of station clothing.

"I am," Ning said, turning back toward the glass. "It’s beautiful. More than I expected, after everyone told me there was nothing worth seeing here."

Lorna followed his gaze toward the pink horizon. "Most of the cadets have been here before, either with their families or on some other trip. They see it once and decide they’ve seen it all. It’s only people who haven’t been here before who stop and stare."

They stood together in silence for a little while, watching the sun slip lower toward the edge of the world.

"I realized I haven’t really asked you how you’ve been finding the academy," Lorna said eventually. "You arrived late, in the middle of the program, and I’ve been so busy with the lesson plans that I never checked how you were assimilating. How has it been?"

"It’s been fine," Ning said. "Better than fine, really. I’ve gotten used to the routine, and I’ve made a few friends. It’s been more interesting than I expected."

"Interesting," Lorna repeated, with the faintest trace of dry amusement. "That’s one way to describe getting four cadets suspended in your first month."

Ning smiled but said nothing, and Lorna did not press the matter any further.

"And how do you feel?" she asked instead, glancing at him. "About the True Simulation, I mean. It’s not far off now, just a few weeks away. Are you ready for it?"

Ning considered the question for a moment.

"I’m pretty confident," he said.

Lorna looked at him a little longer, as though trying to decide whether that confidence was well-founded or whether he simply had not yet understood how difficult the test would be. Whatever she saw in his face seemed to satisfy her, because she nodded slowly.

"Then do well," she said. "I mean that seriously. The True Simulation is expensive, and the academy doesn’t hand out sessions in it lightly. If you perform well the first time, it becomes much easier for me to recommend you for another session, and then another after that."

She turned her eyes back toward the window, where the last sliver of the sun was disappearing behind a distant ridge.

"And if you consistently do well there, you’ll be considered for testing in a real Mecha. Not a simulated one, an actual machine, under supervision. That’s a long way off for most cadets, but for you, it might not be."

Ning understood what she was telling him. The True Simulation was not simply a test to pass, but the first step on a path that led somewhere much more interesting.

"I’ll do my best."