Sentient Worm

Collection part 1

Collection part 1

Taylor and Anet were busy fishing on Demios. Not an activity that you'd usually associate with being busy, however it doesn't take into account how vicious the local wildlife is. Just as Taylor was about to throw her spear at one of the fish, the Lotus opens a call.

"Operator, we have found traces of Rell's energy on a derelict. Your navigation console has been updated with the details."

"Dammit, I almost had it."

"Is everything ok Taylor?"

"Yeah, Lotus just called to say they've found Rell, well his transference energy anyway."

"That's a shame. I like fishing with you."

"I like fishing with you too."

They both stare at each other for a long moment before Taylor says, "We should get these fish to the Daughter. I still can't believe that they've fallen so far as to forget their names."

"Yeah. I wonder how much was inflicted on them by others in their society."

"Given what they did to their own people in pursuit of Warframe development, I don't think I'd be surprised if it turned out to be a lot. However, according to Grandmother, the worst of the damage happened when Son broke containment during a temper tantrum. That allowed them to be infected with the strain of infested that's running rampant here."

Anet's head jerks to one side, "Oh, hey, there's a Velocipede."

"I'll cover you, you take the shot."

"Got it, what do you think Son does with these?"

"Tags most of them and sends them out again. Some of them he uses a counter agent to neutralise the Infested virus, and then sells them to collectors and Tenno."

"Why is the infestation important for the family's story?"

"It's stolen a lot of their memories."

"How sad. Is that why we're doing so much for them?"

Taylor nods, "One of the reasons, they're also using the gathered resources, and information, to develop a cure for the virus in the hope it will restore some of their memories."

"We should try to help them, even after we've found out where the right research facility is."

"And that's why I Lo...like you. Have you built an Archwing launcher yet?"

"No, I'm still trying to scrounge up some more Grokdrul."

"Why didn't you say something. We can do some shopping and run a few bounties out on the plains."

"Because, this is important."

"Anet, stop for a moment and think. How much time have we spent walking to and from the Necrolisk since we started fishing?"

Natah promptly answers, "8 hours 24 minutes, and 13 seconds."

"How long do you think it would have taken to do some shopping and fill a couple of bounties, while also acquiring the Grokdrul you need?"

"6 hours and between 13 and 40 minutes depending on if you get into a conversation or not."

"That long huh. It's still shorter than the time we've spent walking."

"I... didn't consider that."

"Do you think you would have done before this?"

"No, I wouldn't have needed an Archwing."

"Well, you're not alone in that, we're... humans are notoriously bad at predicting long term savings compared to short term costs. Often in the worst ways possible. There's a story that came over from Aleph. A computing team identified a process that was using 99% of the computing time on their computers. So they spent 100 hours on optimising it and halving the time it took to run. When they applied the change, the process still took 99% of the computing time on the computers. What they'd done was optimise the idle loop."