Fanfic / Incompatible System

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In the mid-21st Century, mankind had stumbled upon a method for FTL travel. A most magnificent method. It is fast enough to go to another galaxy in seconds, it is completely harmless to organics, it's precise and safe…

There is only one problem.

You see, someone's been leaving around some kind of material all over the galaxy. Sometimes as dust, sometimes as chunks, sometimes in sixty-thousand-ton lumps embedded in huge devices. And whenever near a human FTL drive, that material blows up hundreds of thousands of times more violently than antimatter (with star-destabilizing gravity waves for larger amounts, too).

Humanity calls it proof that space is filled with insane morons.

The civilizations of the galaxy call it…

MASS EFFECT

Incompatible System is a Mass Effect AU fanfic by mp3.1415player, with elements of Humanx Commonwealth added in. Currently, it's available on Sufficient Velocity, SpaceBattles Archive of our Own and Fanfiction.Net.

Incompatible System provides examples of:

• Absence of Evidence:
  • Part of what freaks out the Citadel races so much about the missing relays is that not only are they gone, but there's no traces or evidence of who, or what, removed them, or how, and if it wasn't for their records, there'd be no way to tell that they were there in the first place.
  • When batarian "pirates" start disappearing with little to no trace, the Citadel Council takes notice.
• Absent Aliens:
  • An interesting twist on the topic. Humanity has quickly developed an FTL drive that allows instant travel between two points in space within 200.000 light years, with one early explorer visiting the Andromeda galaxy on a dare. And yet, for as of yet unexplained reasons, the Milky Way is not overflowing with extragalactic explorers...
  • The thranx had developed their own theories on where the aliens were, only to be pleasantly surprised they had some relatively nearby as good neighbors.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The general philosophy of the Citadel races. For humanity however, and using the lessons learnt from the Madness War, their AI have reached the point of being not only full individuals with their own emotions, but also entirely loyal to their creators. They occupy key places in the sciences, impartial moderators of governments, and explorers. Some are considered outright family members by organics. Also, they have proven a degree to refuse orders...particularly in regards to anything revolving around being too close around planium/eezo.
• Aliens Steal Cable: With humans being the aliens in this case, first for the thranx, and then the Extranet. Oh, and they have also hacked the relay network to track the Citadel ship movements.
• Alpha Strike: Quarians cornered by batarians take out their lead ship through Explosive Overclocking of their main cannon, followed by all their remaining missiles.
• Anti-Mentor: The reapers to all Citadel races, probably very deliberately. By providing them with planium-based tech very early on, they have permanently locked them out of the much more powerful WIMP tech tree due to the fact that even a few milligrams of planium will explode with city-levelling power if exposed to WIMP flux and there is no way to safely decontaminate most Citadel worlds.
• Artificial Meat: The "synth-steak in the galley" is recommended in passing as "superb", although whether that's because humans just don't know any better anymore or whether it really does measure up to the real deal (or whether the distinction even still matters culturally by the taste of the times) is left unexplored.
• As You Know: Comes up in several chapters. Justified, as these are often excerpts from talks and reports at conferences where rather sizeable audiences need to be brought up to speed on developments of recent months to years.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Humanity's opinion of planium/eezo. Sure, it can do cool stuff with gravity and mass, but WIMP theory allows them to do most, if not all of it, without the substance, and its explosive interactions with WIMP emissions means that it's incompatible with much of their technology, with their WIMP-based TBT FTL drive being capable of covering exponentially more distance in just a fraction of the time an eezo-based FTL drive would need, without the drawbacks of either eezo FTL or the relays. Even using it as a power source is risky, and using it as a weapon is more effort than its worth, in part because the reaction is too energetic to scale down that much. It's eventually declared that planium/eezo is unfeasible for anything smaller than depopulating planets.
• Back from the Brink: Humanity made a miraculous recovery after long-smoldering and ubiquitous decline that finally erupted in things going hot not too long ago, and dangerously close to finally so, too. It got better, but consequences are still sorely felt.
• Bilingual Conversation: After only a few years, most humans fully understand Low Thranx just as thranx understand English. However, due to humans possessing more flexible mouths and Low Thranx requiring gestures involving limbs humans lack, both have a difficult time speaking each other's language. Though a hybrid language is forming among those who work closely together.
• Brain–Computer Interface: Humanity's very fancy n-link and the thranx' less fancy but still useful, non-specifically named data implant. Both wireless, of course.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: That's how thranx view the Zex hive. Leyzenzuzex, in particular, sometimes borders on Genki Girl.
• Casual Interstellar Travel:
  • The thranx have the posigravity drive. It's capable of traversing high double digits of light years a day and is even expected to reach low triples in due time.^note Compared to Mass Effect's unassisted fifteen that are considered as practically sustainable top speed no less. It lets private corporations operate freighters between systems and turn a profit.
  • Humanity decides that "multiples of speed of light" is for losers and invents the blink drive. Its only settings on the speed dial are "0" and "Yes", effectively teleporting a ship across the universe within a moment's notice.
  • Completely averted for Citadel. Several characters even note that if the relays became non-functional or disappeared, their entire society would collapse.^note It Makes Sense in Context, given how that would still leave them with their other, non-relay means of interstellar travel which—true to the trope—would be staggeringly impressive to someone else with no such convenience at all while still being sufficiently casual to the former. The point is that it's just perhaps not quite casually intragalactic enough anymore for how insular and widespread across the galaxy the systems are in which the various races have been going about their businesses.
• The Comically Serious: The geth have no sense of humor but manage to be outright hilarious regardless. When trying to contact humanity, they get the idea to attack batarian pirates as that is the only definitive interaction humans have had with the Citadel races. When the idea of "depleting batarian pirate supply" comes up, the geth note that the batarians "exhibit insufficient cognitive ability" and that it's unlikely they'll run out any time soon.
• Confirmation Bias: Thanks to their first and very destructive meeting with planium/eezo, humanity spends a couple decades outright refusing to seriously consider that mass relays could possibly be anything other than enormous weapon arrays of some kind. It's not until they crack the encryption on a relay's software that they learn otherwise.
• Contrived Coincidence: It just so happened that some emergency A happening some-unrelated-place B occupied some irrelevant characters C, holding up ship D on which they were supposed to be from proceeding without delay on some schedule E so that some other ship F on some other schedule G could be witnessed having some event H happen to it to be there and prevent some consequences I from turning … consequencier, all with the impact on D's mission ultimately turning out barely more than anecdotal and cosmetic.
• Crazy Enough to Work:
  • Humanity's solution to the massive ticking bomb in their system that is buried in a moon and cannot be dug out? Drag the entire moon out of the system and detonate it once it's at safe distance.
  • The quarian attack on a batarian warship.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Paeluis is a turian with a lot of crackpot conspiracy theories. And the ones mentioned are all right: The Citadel is run by a powerful AI, the keepers are working for said AI, and the relay monument is a weapon of some sort.
• Cyberspace: Humanity's mindscapes. Can sit anywhere on a sliding scale from subtle Augmented Reality, including projections of other users who wish to be present remotely, to full-blown, fully immersive, detached-from-reality, virtual chatrooms. Translator Microbes live here.
• Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction: The WIMP technology and eezo don't interact well, at all. The resulting explosion is described as making a matter-antimatter reaction look like a firecracker.
• Dashed Plot Line: Events of chapters, even of chapters-within-chapters, tend to happen months to years apart.
• Divided States of America: After the Quick War, USA had been split into pieces, some annexed by the neighbours, some independent now. The author elaborates on this a couple of times, but is yet to present a map.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The software update that they use to monitor the relay network are being considered unlikely to be noticed by anyone. Literally the next section, "The Interlude In Which Decisions Are Made", is the geth collective discussing the aforementioned changes.
  • At many points, various humans or thranx will make a comment in jest that is actually true, without knowing about it.
  • Of the various groups investigating the disappearance of relays, it's the quarians who have the most data, despite everyone else thinking otherwise.
• Dropping the Bombshell:
  • When rescue arrives, but not as they know it.
  Hyltrorizex: It's not one of ours.
  • Implied in an omake.
  Tevos: What in the name of the Goddess do you mean, "Rannoch is missing"?!
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom:
  • The eventual solution to dealing with the Charon mass relay is to drag the entire moon out of the solar system and blow it up. According to later chapters, the resulting black hole consumed approximately half the moon's mass.
  • Tevos' thoughts imply that some other worlds might have been experimenting with WIMP technology, given her thoughts about how Citadel once found a homesystem with a planet that mysteriously exploded.
• Electronic Telepathy: No cables needed for humanity's or thranx' implanted-smartphone equivalents.
• Everyone Is Armed: When humanity starts covertly spying on the Citadel races, they note that every ship is surprisingly well armed, causing them to wonder what threat exists that even civilian ships seem to have military-grade weapons.
• Explosive Overclocking: A ship's main gun is overcharged to the point of slagging it in an attempt to daringly escape a blockade.
• Expy: Leyzenzuzex is basically an alien version of Sheldon Cooper, down to quoting some of his lines.
• False Flag Operation: Kind of but not for the usual reasons. Geth decide to hunt down batarian pirates to protect creators, while making sure that the Council races cannot identify them as geth. At the same time, they want to use weapons that were inspired by the humans' gamma laser with hopes of drawing their attention and making contact. In the process though, they are being mistaken by the quarians as the race who first helped them.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Naturally, given setting and universe, except for the important distinction that humanity's and thranx' methods do not (and absolutely, violently cannot) require eezo to function.
• First Contact:
  • A very friendly one between humanity and thranx. It is noted by both parties in fact how well it goes, but they have enough in common, and enough to offer one another, that despite some initial suspicion by the thranx it all goes very well.
  • Defied with the Citadel races, which are actively avoided by humans.
• Godzilla Threshold: Upon discovering planium/eezo, humanity's military does initially consider weaponising it. By the time they have made contact with the thranx however, both species have concluded that it is too impractical to use unless you are intending to wipe out entire solar systems, effectively making it a weapon of last resort.
• Green Rocks: Planium a.k.a. element zero.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Deconstructed. Humanity is noticeably suspicious and mildly unsettled by the existence of the asari because of this trope. Every other alien they've come across has been humanoid at best but the asari look like attractive blue women with tendrils for hair, something that's considered ludicrously unlikely.
• Gunship Rescue: Rael'Zorah's ship, after taking out two batarian warships, is cornered by the remaining two while defenseless. They radio for help… cue Frickin' Laser Beams out of nowhere slicing the attackers apart.
• Hand Signals: Not quite to the level of Signed Language, but Low Thranx involves a lot of gestures involving four arms and a pair of antennae to convey certain meanings. Purely verbal communication is possible for them for using radios and such, but it lacks the same degree of emphasis and breadth. For initial contact, four-armed holographic avatars are used by humanity to convey both the full meaning of their verbal speech, but to also tell the thranx what their own non-verbal communication (such as a human smile) means. Later, they work out matters so their mutual translator devices convey what is meant.
• Hidden Depths: Lord Alamo is initially described as "A ten-gallon hat with a five-gallon man trying to hide in it" and is usually very loud and blustery. However, once aliens are confirmed to exist, he makes several impressively insightful comments regarding them which stun all the people who have spent years dismissing him as an idiot. This is foreshadowed in his first appearance, where he demanded TBT drives for the Empire of Texas in the same loud tone, only to be cowed into a more reasonable stance when another politician reminded him of what caused the Quick War and who was responsible, and accepts an offer to submit a more detailed proposal to establish colonies with the aim of preserving Texan culture.
• Hollywood Science: Averted, with one of the scientists conducting the first WIMP experiments complaining loudly there are no flashy devices around.
• Humanity Is Advanced: Well, humanity and thranx. Due to not running into mass effect technology before developing WIMP technology, both are far superior to the Citadel races when it comes to space travel and weaponry. When humans first encounter a salarian ship, its speed is considered embarrassingly low, its main gun primitive, and its CIWS laser array pitied for its ability to barely scuff the paint with sustained fire.
• Humanity Is Insane:
  • There is a good share of that, although various global conflicts are stated to have eventually resulted in tempering that trait a lot. Not just in terms of an object lesson, but also in leading to massive breakthroughs in psychology. As a result, humanity as a whole has become a lot more stable.
  • Interestingly enough, humans view all the Citadel races as insane, for having something as dangerous as eezo everywhere including on or even in their own bodies. Not that they realize how dangerous it is...
• Humans Are Cthulhu:
  • When the Citadel races discover someone has been stealing mass relays, they certainly get the feeling the ones responsible must be some Eldritch Abomination.
  • The geth meanwhile immediately prepare to poke said abomination to determine whether peaceful or even positively gainful relations be possible.
• Humans Are Flawed: A general theme is that humans have made a number of serious mistakes eventually reaching borderline-Class-2 Apocalypse How, but are doing their best to overcome the underlying issues that caused them. The thranx, upon learning humanity's history, generally agree that they have learned from their mistakes and are unlikely to ever repeat them.
• Insectoid Aliens: Thranx appear similar to large blue and purple insects, often compared to a hybrid of praying mantises and grasshoppers, albeit with eight limbs (four arms and four legs) rather than six.
• The Internet Is for Porn: While searching the Extranet for fictional ships and combat information, the geth have to delete over 98 % of all the information they download due to it all being "non-reproductory entertainment".
• Lampshade Hanging: All the time. About the lack of alien visitors from anywhere in the universe despite convenience and achievability of WIMP tech (blink drive in particular), why (canon) races never bothered to research eezo's true nature beyond simply using the mass relays dropped in their laps … Walk into IKEA's lighting department and you won't find as many shades.
• Large Ham: Lord Alamo of the Empire of Texas. Enough so that him going several months without shouting "Yeehaw!" during a meeting has some wondering whether he's fallen ill.
• Loophole Abuse: Of the physics kind. How the blink drive can get wherever in practically no time, and how that still doesn't count as violation of the light speed limit.
• Made of Explodium: What humanity thinks of element zero. The first test flight to Mars had caused the Prothean ruins (thankfully, as yet undiscovered and with no humans within a few thousand miles) to vanish in a fireball bigger than the one that obliterated the dinosaurs. Apparently, such reactions release more energy than an equivalent amount of antimatter. The thranx concur after their own studies. Later, they conclude it is too dangerous to contact the Citadel races for the Citadel's sake, because even with WIMP shielding in place, it would be too great a risk to setting off all the eezo around them. Including in their bodies.
• Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: Interestingly, averted. While a few of the southern states are now allied with Latin America, Texas is proudly, crazily and loudly independent.
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Defied on a dare.
• Million to One Chance: Discussed, lampshaded, played very straight after a theorized, rarely observed, but obstinately ineradicable quirk of certain technology makes plot happen.
  Leyzenzuzex: It was a one in a million chance.
  Xentinilnu: As the saying goes one in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.
  Siltuzixta: The fact is that it happened, so the chances were in our case one in one.
• Minovsky Particles: Though they are called WIMP in this story, they serve exactly the same role, that being they make the factions that have them better at everything than the factions that don't. Once humans started mastering those "Weakly Interacting Massive Particles", they got better hyperdrives, computers, AI, lasers, artificial gravity... The list goes on.
• Mirror Character: Leyzenzuzex and Roland, to the lampshade-hanging chagrin of crewmate and wife of the latter's. They can't help it, it runs in their families.
  Sarah: He's just like them, only with more hands…
• Noodle Incident: The crew of the Seeker of Interesting Things apparently are responsible for why there's a series titled Things Spaceship Crews Are No Longer Allowed To Do. When their AI, Isaac, is asked about it, all he says is "We didn't do it, no one saw anything, and they can't prove it anyway".
  • They also mention a time when Isaac was thrown out of a bar window, which apparently happened often enough to cause him to ask to specify which time.
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture:
  • Delightfully averted; the thranx tell horror stories, play videogames, and watch Sci-Fi as much as the next human.
    • When the geth need inspiration for a ship design that absolutely cannot be reasonably linked back to them, they look up what's effectively the Mass Effect universe's equivalent to Star Trek.
  • Also, inverted: Not a single item of human pop culture is even so much as hinted at.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • The disappearance of relays is this from the Council perspective. Not only have they no idea who did this or when, or how, or why. They also have no sign that there ever had been any besides some documents that say so. All of this means that there might have been others that disappeared and they will never know now because they weren't documented.
  • When batarian "pirates" start disappearing as well, they have a similar, if less extreme, reaction, and start wondering whether the two are connected.
  • In an omake, a turian patrol discovers the Migrant Fleet nearly thirty years after every quarian seemingly vanished from the galaxy. The entire fleet is abandoned and unpowered, but the ships show no signs of a struggle or battle despite clear evidence that they were abandoned in a hurry. The investigating turians spend their several hour long search jumping at shadows and ready to shoot at the slightest sign of movement.
• Occam's Razor: While the Citadel races ponder who is disappearing mass relays along with how and why, the quarians correctly guess that it's someone who lives inside the now inaccessible region and doesn't want anyone to find them. Though they're still stumped on the "how" part.
• Oh, Crap!: Half the fic is that, one way or another:
  • Humanity's reaction to finding Charon holding sixty thousand tons of the same substance that leveled half of Mars with a couple hundred kilos
  • The crew of Rylix, upon realizing their drive is out
  • The thranx, hearing how they were about to investigate a system with a star-destabilizing-grade bomb in it
  • The Citadel leaders, once they learned someone had been removing mass relays, cutting off a large chunk of galaxy space amounting to nearly a tenth of its volume
  • The quarians are caught between giving this or not when their people are saved from batarian pirates, as whoever saved them displayed firepower and stealth technology which should be impossible given their understanding of technology. And talks back in their language.
• Older Than They Look: Due to advances in medical technology, both humans and thranx have more than doubled their natural lifespan, now easily living to be over two hundred years old. A station commander is described as being "in the prime of his life" at 120 years old.
• One World Order:
  • Humanity is headed there, although a few states are still staying out.
    • Although it seems to be showing some cracks and signs of being a forced development. The "Empire of Texas" for example, pushes for independent colonization of space. The current ruling entity of Earth is in a position to outright block them, and presumably others, from doing so AND is denying them the technology they would need to head out on their own.
  • Meanwhile the thranx are a unified state, having done so largely peacefully beforehand.
• Paranoia Fuel: In-Universe, the idea that mass relays can go missing with zero evidence they were ever there to begin with. Tevos brings up that it's entirely possible that whoever's been removing them could have been doing so for centuries without anyone realizing.
• Person of Mass Destruction: An interesting variant. Any biotic is considered a walking tactical nuke which the slightest leak in WIMP drive shielding can set off. Major advancements in said shielding have been made, but even trace amounts of eezo aren't so much as looked at without extreme caution exercised.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Considering how destructive is destabilized eezo and how easy it is to set off the reaction, humanity invests a lot of resources into technology that can detect even microscopic quantities from light years away and heavily regulates exploration of unknown systems.
  • Thranx implement similar measures once they learn about eezo.
  • Paeluis explains why he's so suspicious about mass relays, pointing out that the various races know functionally nothing about them beyond how to use them and how to turn them on. They don't know what they're made out of, how they work, or even how to turn them off. Given the true creators of the relays and the events of canon, he's absolutely right to be suspicious.
  • Human and thranx stealth tech means they can get 'impossibly' close to Citadel ships to observe, which has a lot of ships feeling like they are being watched without ever seeing anything.
• Retcon: Of a sort. The aforementioned FTL drive of humanity was initially (heavily) implied but not explicitly stated to allow instant travel to anywhere in the universe. The author later introduced an In-Universe software range limit of 200,000 light years per blink - which merely allows instant travel to anywhere in the galaxy.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When humanity discover Charon contains a device capable of wrecking the whole solar system, they assume someone out there might want to destroy them. True, but a bit more complicated than a simple explosive device.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The three Council races are aware that relays are disappearing, but are keeping it secret from one another, and are doing their own independent investigations with zero cooperation.
• Running Gag: Batarians are batarians. A statement used to explain why batarians would do any particular Stupid Evil act.
• Schizo Tech: One of the main reasons humanity initially assumed that the mass relay had to be meant as a bomb was that any real research into the properties of planium would inevitably lead to WIMP theory, which would both let you realize how horrifically dangerous planium is and let you do anything planium can do (other than make stupidly big explosions) much more effectively and safely. So the only way a species could end up using planium for non-destructive purposes would be if they were given planium-based tech as a Black Box from some other race, and then never did more than the most cursory research into what it was or how it worked.
• Schmuck Bait: Lampshaded. Doctor John Warden suggest that Citadel races not be told about how WIMP technology interacts with planium unless it becomes immediately relevant, citing that telling someone not to do something is basically asking them to do it as soon as you're not looking.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  • Tevos notes that she doesn't want the turians to find out about the missing mass relays because "they'll get all... turian about it".
  • "Batarian faction is batarian" is the reason geth believe they'll continue attacking the quarians.
  • Even the asari point out that "batarians are after all batarians".
  • Salarians being salarians is Rael's conclusion of their being incurably nosy.
  • The Zex hive is known for being "so … them".
• Shout-Out:
  • A krogan once claimed, "Super easy, barely an inconvenience".
  • The name of the AI on duty aboard the We Come In Peace? Gort.
• Spaceship Girl: The AI, naturally, although no more by necessity and no less by choice and occupation than their fleshy crewmates
• Subspace Ansible: Humans develop practical FTL comms soon after they developed practical FTL travel, and the thranx catch up with their own not long after that. Before that, humans could at least resort to trivial, if annoying, jumps to close the distance between callers for traditional radio. Blink-capable courier drones are also in use.
• Take Me to Your Leader: The ship sent to make First Contact with the thranx is called We Come In Peace. Not that the thranx are likely to get the reference (although, with their similar thinking, it's not impossible they have an analogue of the expression), but they still appreciated the message in itself.
• Take That!:
  • "The entire thing [concerning mass relays] sounded like the plot of one of the less plausible computer games [Leyzenzuzex]’d played as a young child".
  • The scientists investigating relays note that they seem to have been created by a species with a mastery of manipulating eezo and absolutely abysmal skills at programming. They especially complain about a number of programming bugs including the one that causes the entire network to dump all of its stored energy at the same time.
• Tempting Fate: Leyzen gets to boast about one more victory over the universe before his luck averting the looming Million to One Chance finally runs out.
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: The working principle behind the blink, sorry, Temporal Bounce-back Transportation drive. With a twist: Time Travel is involved, but it's made very clear that it isn't actually suitable for anything time-travelly in the traditional sense. The real benefit for the space travel part comes from how it turns the question of where into one of when, namely far enough in the past of the universe's inflation that one's humble strides there will have translated to grand enough leaps back in the now. All within a handful of microseconds for everyone involved.^note As in without such pesky side effects from, say, Time Dilation due to different perspectives. Neat!
  Amanda Jeffries: Genuine time travel is impossible. This is better.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The author generally trusts readers to be at least notionally familiar with genre-typical lingo (or be motivated enough to become so), like what an L2 point is,^note one of a series of stable or semi-stable locations relative to one body orbiting another in a system without splurging on speech or prose to conspicuously expound upon suchlike trivia.
• Weaponized Exhaust:
  • Humanity's blink drives and the thranx' posigravity drive are only dangerous to someone using eezo, if spectacularly so. And while the former have made enough strides in shielding to safely use the drives to transport eezo if needed, with the latter working on catching up, it's still explosive enough that not even AI want anything but automated and unmanned transports to do so.
  • Among the more problematic bugs in the relays' programming is the one which causes the entire network to simultaneously dump its entire energy storage into surrounding systems. Though it's noted that the conditions are so unlikely that one would almost have to try to cause it intentionally. Leaving it unfixed is still considered far too irresponsible, and so it gets patched out preemptively.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Humanity, AI, and thranx have no trouble treating each other as equal, contrasting the various attitudes present among the Citadel races which are often at odds outside of the public eye.
• World War III: On 2034 Earth, almost two dozen cities were leveled by nihilist terrorists in a massive attack of unclear purpose with atomic bombs, but likely intending to set off a nuclear war. A full-scale war was narrowly averted, but it's still half a billion casualties. And then a billion more indirect ones.