Odyssey (The Spiral Slayers Book 3)
Page 22
He thought the whole thing was crazy but Stow didn’t lie. If they were right, he considered how many from the planet below had made the voyage that day.
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That night on the bridge d-aba came to Adamarus, “Adamarus, we, that is my species, have translated the 2nd to the last vibration…”
“Vibration?” Adamarus asked.
d-aba placed one foreleg above one eye and turned away. “We have been translating the vibrations of the super speck particle for thousands of years Adamarus.”
“Why?”
“You know why. To learn all knowledge, Adamarus.”
“And have you personally learned all that knowledge?”
“No. We’ve been feeding it into the Archive.”
Adamarus was stunned. “Really?”
“Yes. So, we only have one vibration left to go. Only our hive is left. We must survive and carry on our species’ research.”
“Okay, sounds good to me.”
“Well,” said d-aba sounding all the world embarrassed to Adamarus, “we need the Archive in order to carry on.”
“No problem,” Adamarus said and shrugged.
“Oh no,” d-aba said, “First, it belongs to you. But beyond that, you too will need the Archive. It will take time but our, that is, the Stow’s first priority is to create at least two copies.”
Adamarus just looked at d-aba as if the not-so-little bug was crazy. “Can’t we share?”
d-aba went to the viewer and looked at the blue world below. “You will need one, possibly two Archives for bate and, to advance them.” d-aba turned and withdrew her front legs, “Listen Adamarus, we are almost certain that the Slayers can and did track us here. The mission of Nemesis is not completed, Adamarus. The Slayers will come and when they do, we must be ready for them.”
Adamarus looked over at the Archive. It rested on a steel cube. Inside that steel cube was a sample of Nemesis’ DNA. The Archive contained a complete record of how to clone it. Still, Adamarus laughed, “How can we be ready for them?”
d-aba again turned to the viewer and just stared at the world below. Finally, she asked, “Could any Amularian have won that battle we witnessed?”
After a moment he said, “I doubt it… no, probably not.”
“They already have advanced tactics beyond you or me,” she said. “Given what we’ve seen, they will most likely destroy themselves in a few thousand years.” She turned and looked at Adamarus, “But, who knows… and, what else do we have to do?”
Evelyn came in and sat down, “I have a question. Why did the Slayers and Loud do what they did? Why did the Slayers disguised as Loud come and befriend us, give us immortality then pretend that the Slayers were attacking us? It makes no sense.”
“The Loud were an illusion whose purpose we are only beginning to see,” d-aba said.
Adamarus said, “Why do the Slayers wish to kill every intelligent life form they come in contact with? We don’t know but the Slayers wanted us to build a Whiteship and come after them so we would help them by sterilizing more galaxies. We thought we were sneaking up on them to destroy them and all along they were playing us like puppets.”
Evelyn was looking at Adamarus in shock, “Oh my God, that can’t be.”
“Howard Dawn knew something was going on. He found out that the Loud couldn’t be from the star they said they were from and I’m pretty sure Howard confronted Bugs just before Howard had his cerebral hemorrhage.”
“You don’t think…” Evelyn said.
“Yes, I do. The timing is too precise.” Adamarus turned to d-aba, “The Stow have translated all but the last vibration. Don’t you have any idea what the Slayer’s purpose is?”
“We have stored all the information we have learned from the vibrations of the super speck on the Archive but do not yet understand it all.”
“And the final vibration you were able to translate—the second to last vibration—it was a message left by someone in a previous universe?”
“Yes,” d-aba said, “it was a warning that universes were prematurely ending. That this was the fault of intelligent, self-aware life and, that it was caused by… well, we’re not sure. It sounds like somehow someone tried to go faster than light, but to our knowledge, this is not possible. We don’t even know how you would try. But there might be a connection.”
“What do you mean?” Evelyn asked.
“The Stow have discovered that when self-aware beings, such as you or I… when we die, energy leaves our bodies and travels to the nearest black hole. We believe our awareness might survive after death. The thing is, this energy is new to the universe, and so, when the universe ends, this awareness energy would have to pass beyond the universe… that is, survive the universe. What this awareness energy does then… well, that’s beyond our universe and therefore unknowable.”
“You mentioned a connection,” Adamarus said.
“Yes,” d-aba replied. “If the universe ends prematurely, we believe all the universe’s awareness energy would be lost. The thing is, we believe the Slayers translated all of the super speck long ago. So, they would know about the awareness energy, the warning and the universes ending prematurely and what that would mean. They would have translated the last vibration. They would understand all the knowledge they have gained.”
“So,” Adamarus said, “they know more than us.”
“Yes,” d-aba said.
“They know more,” Evelyn said, “and look what they’re doing.”
They all looked at each other.
End of book 3...
To be continued…look for…
The Spiral Slayers
Book 4
The War Lords
Rusty Williamson
About the Author
Ronald (Rusty) Williamson lives in San Diego CA.
Besides writing science fiction, Williamson works with computer animation, video and sound editing. At a layman's level, he has been interested in quantum physics (Superstrings and LQG) and relativity since 1980. His other hobbies are playing guitar and song writing.
The author would love to hear from you. You can email him at rusty@rustywilliamson.com.