131 - *Display Anomaly*

Perrin eased himself gently into code, strolling down his avenue of dragons, answering their hissing, roaring challenges with a negligent wave of his hand as he walked between them. *Such quaint images I conjured up when I was younger. Dragons. Moats filled with mercury. Glass mountains. I was such a child.* The avenue was white marble, the dragons appeared to be marble as well, though marble of all colours, with ruby eyes and gold eye-ridges.  The two flanking the glass mountain bridge were black and red glittering granite, with diamond teeth and onyx eyes.

The bridge soared across the mercury river, clear as crystal, threaded with gold.  If strange DNA stepped on that bridge it would liquify and drop the stranger through the gold wires, taking them into chunks that would then fall into the silver liquid below.  He wasn't too concerned that someone's mind wouldn't stand that kind of dissolution.  If they cared to try his code he'd kill their consciousness in a heartbeat.

The glass mountain split open before him, as if it were a liquid, a waterfall with no by spray. He ran his mental hands along the cool, smooth walls and drew a deep breath as he stepped in onto the red carpet. Anyone else and it would turn to blood and dump them into a shredder below. Even if someone made it this far past his security, he still wanted fail-safes. No one was going to steal what was his.

The opening sealed itself behind him as he looked at his sacrosanct kingdom. It was a castle's Great Hall, with gray and black tile mosaic floor depicting waves of a stormy sea; more water than this whole world had ever seen. Kraken writhed up the steps aiming for the blue glass sailing ship suspended, tossing, over the gilt balcony. Inside the glass mountain everything looked dim and bluish as if underwater. Everything but the pulsing red of the carpet that led to the central disk.

The lift disk was a shimmering white circle in the centre of the mosaic sea, big enough for one of his security dragons to coil up on. That kind of open lift had been fashionable on Earth when he was a boy, despite people's vertigo, and it had been a short-lived fad among architects.  Short-lived because people kept fainting. It had never bothered him and if he was honest with himself, he quite liked the swooping sensation as his mind was swept up to the top of the mountain. He was certainly in no physical danger here. Code on Chishiki was his playground, his refuge.

He stepped into his control room, a fantasy of crystals and soaring glass columns, light glittering and rebounding like the ancient image of the super hero's fortress.

As he stepped into the space the whole room flushed red, a slow flash. *Anomaly alert. Anomaly alert. Sensors indicate unprecedented energy flow, central Gehinna.*

*Display anomaly.* He settled onto the throne and leaned his chin on his hand. Even in code things were getting so tiring for some reason. His last medical renewal should have cleared up that little problem. He preferred to maintain his late twenties energy level. This felt like he was somewhere in his fifties and he'd check on his medical settings once he was done here. *I work so hard for my people.*

The anomaly on Gehinna was a breakthrough lava flow, belching more spines and spikes of rock into the air. *They are probably mining. Modify acceptable parametres, raise alert levels by a factor of ten percent.*

*Acknowledged, Prime.* The lights dimmed to a more normal blue-green before flashing amber and then red. *Anomaly alert II. Sensors indicate unprecedented energy flow, northern Hinnemon.*

*Display anomaly.*

It was in the volcanic area of the continent, at least that's what the sensors had displayed for years. He leaned back and waved a negligent hand. *It's probably just Kore erupting ag--*

He interrupted himself, leaning forward. What was that? It wasn't a volcanic eruption at all. It actually had a phased power signature. *Refresh* Was it possible that some of Nadine's people had spread from their reservation without permission? And why would they go from relatively complete terraforming to that hellhole?

The image shimmered and as it steadied it showed the spreading plume of ash blowing north in front of the fall weather front.

Ah. A glitch. The computers had reported a rogue terraforming program that it had wiped out, near this anomaly, with a theraputic water strike. It was probably that, that had triggered the volcanic activity. Everything was normal. It was tremendously unlikely for anything else to be there, therefore it had to be a momentary flaw in the code. Time to do a code renewal. And it couldn't hurt to scan the area more frequently. It had been... hmmm... almost five hundred years since he'd done an eyeball survey of that continent. But it would require instructing a dozen pilots in actual flight, and the Tech class was getting fractious. The last thing they needed was more learning; even so few as a dozen. The orbital scans would just have to do well enough.

*Raise anomaly sensitivity ratings on Hinnemon. High alert scans. Deep scan on Gehinna periphery, scanning for illegal encroachment, prohibited mining and harvesting, or illicit attempts to escape to Xanadu.*