by Aer-ki Jyr
“I don’t get it,” she complained. “There has got to be something special about these spots, but all we have are popsicles that the Hadarak never touched.”
“Were they trying and unable to get through?”
“I don’t know what they were doing. That brainbox in the command center…”
“…was gross as hell…”
“Agreed, but at least it was coordinating the others. I have no idea why they set up camp everywhere else except the interface terminals. They don’t appear to be doing anything.”
“Maybe they’re starter units for something bigger. Most of them aren’t in the Hadarak playbook that we’ve seen before.”
“All we’ve seen is the combat version plus a little distance learning from Kara. We’ve never actually been on a Hadarak planet. Could that thing have been one of their leaders?”
“It did suicide when we tried to interrogate it.”
“And how many Hadarak do that?”
“Plenty, if they can do damage with their death, but I’ve never known their structures to just melt when we get close. Are you sure it died on its own?” Sara asked.
“You mean did the observers kill it? Not that I could detect.”
“What if they lied?”
“You mean it wasn’t there for the purpose they said it was?”
“Maybe it was there to help them and they didn’t want us to see what they were actually doing with it? Maybe all they had to do was give an order and it suicided?”
“Possible. And why doesn’t the Maty have drones to do this cleaning?” Morgan complained as she spilled more gore into the water as she pulled off a net-like webbing stretched between two of the spires with globs of tissue on either side that had to be scraped off, for they were adhering to the building material like glue.
“Maybe they’re still trying to lock down the entrances. Why is it only contacting you?”
“No clue. But it has to be narrow beaming the signal or you’d pick it up too.”
“It wasn’t telepathy?”
“Nope. I still have the comm scans to prove it.”
“Are we going to do this all day?” Sara complained, starting to cut through another of the icky tree/snake things that didn’t seem capable of moving to defend itself, but it was still very much alive and Sara had to make sure her telepathy was off so she didn’t hear its death screams. “We have no means to get rid of this stuff anyway.”
Morgan stopped cutting and swam up into the clearer waters where she could see Sara in the distance.
“You’re right. All the combat versions are dead, and unless they get reinforcements they won’t have the biomatter to grow any larger even if they cannibalize what’s here. If the Maty wants to clean the gore out they can send their janitor bots. Let’s head out.”
“Right behind you,” Sara said, zooming across the lake but still at some distance from Morgan as the Ninja Monkey got another comm from the Maty.
“Hold up. It’s talking to me again. Says to come to another location.”
“Is it monitoring our conversation?”
“Maybe. The location is in this chamber,” Morgan said, trying to manually input the location into her battlemap and relay it to Sara. “On the other side of you.”
“Well get over here. You’re its favorite,” Sara said, waiting until Morgan jetted over to her then they swam in tandem to a specific spire on the floor, only to find the location wasn’t in it, but between it and another one. The location was nothing but blank panel covered in tiny hexagons like most of the Maty’s internal structures, but they were so thin they were virtually invisible unless you touched them with your bare hand and felt the slight grip they offered.
“We’re here?” Morgan transmitted back on the same frequency. “Now what?”
No response came, but the floor silently melted and sank down revealing a shaft lined with lights that began to pulsate in the direction away from them.
“Garbage chute?” Sara warned.
“I’m going to find out. You can stay here and monitor.”
“If it closes up we’ll lose comms, so no, I’m coming with you.”
“Alright,” Morgan said, tipping over and swimming in headfirst into the 3 meter wide shaft as Sara kept up on her heels…then once both were inside the floor sealed back over the tunnel behind them.
“Secret room?” Sara suggested.
“Hopefully with answers,” Morgan said as they swam down and around a slight curve, then through a spiral that ended in another floor that opened before them into a large, empty chamber with nothing but water in it.
“Well…”
“Give it a second,” Morgan urged as she swam out into the middle, only to be contacted by a telepathic presence below her.
It didn’t speak, but merely warned to stay back, with Morgan swimming upward with Sara towards the domed ceiling that had no air pockets in it or visible tunnels, though hidden ones could be anywhere.
The floor far beneath them melted away rapidly, revealing a second thinner chamber below bathed in light from numerous sources, but in the middle of it all was a glob of chrome that began to extend a tentacle upward towards them, then that tentacle stopped and began to swell as material from below was transferred up it in waves.
“Shapeshifter,” Sara commented as the thing eventually mimicked the Human body, but without any subtlety to it. No eyes, nose, ears, fingernails. Just a basic biped looking like it was made out of Morgan’s silhouette rather than her holo…but she could clearly feel its pain.
Transition us into the Essence realm, it said into Morgan’s mind clearly, so we can speak. I cannot remain here if you do not.
“It wants to go into the Essence realm. Needs to.”
“Is this…”
“Help me,” Morgan asked, extending a battlemeld link to Sara. She accepted and their minds merged into one as they coordinated with each other to create a bubble around both of them and the three story tall biped before them as well as the water in between…but one tethered to the surrounding walls in an advanced technique that would lock them in place within the room despite the spin of the planet that would otherwise see them float away in the Essence realm where gravity had no effect.
As soon as they popped into the other realm Morgan felt the biped relax in a massive relief…only to see it transform before them into a much more defined shape, one with boxy features that did not resemble the Humans, though the basic dimensions were similar. The head morphed into four glowing eyes with a bifurcated plate beneath them like a football helmet mask, then it raised a hand and pointed one of four fingers at Morgan.
“You must take possession of the Maty,” it said audibly through the water as well as a comm transmission matching its words and cadence.
“Explain,” Morgan said simply rather than getting snippy, because she knew they had a limited time to talk before they had to release the Essence bubble, and pushing back the water that now filled the empty space they had left was going to take far more effort than leaving.
“The Hadarak do not seek knowledge. They pervert the purpose of the Maty and I cannot override their actions. They endanger those preserved here. They silence our eyes to use them to surveil you. They seek to digest and assimilate the Maty into their biomass, but they do not know how. The answer lies in the knowledge here, but they have not found it yet. You must take possession before they do, or this galaxy’s legacy will be lost.”
“What are you?”
“I am Gahana. This galaxy is toxic to me, but I have remained in a limited state as caretaker along with a few others. We remain dormant in a shielded fashion, but our abilities are compromised. If we assert ourselves we become vulnerable to the toxicity. If we emerge to defend the Maty we die. If we remain concealed and the Hadarak consume the Maty, we die. The toxicity has risen greatly since we were entombed here. Escape is no longer possible.”
“What is this toxicity?”
“A weapon that poisons the lifeforce
of the galaxy. One that is uniquely dangerous to our mechanical physiology. Your biology is unaffected, but we were spawned from the lifesprings in a different form. And with a purpose. We are to counter the chaos and carnage, for it is not meant to be this way. Something is wrong with the universe, and we are meant to fight that wrong. We never discovered what or why, but have done what we can to mitigate the damage as we sought to learn more and expand our influence beyond our spawning point and shield the lesser kin that we discovered. Kin that knew nothing of a mission, and were consumed by confusion and base instincts. They are victims of an unknown perpetrator, and while we could not save them, we devoted ourselves to eliminating the greatest of the threats to them in order to allow them a chance to win the smaller battles that we could not catalog.”
“By cataloging you mean observing and documenting?” Sara interrupted.
“We have done this so they could learn from others’ past mistakes, not from a point of apathy. We cannot be everywhere at once, nor can we make people better. They must be allowed to grow, and growth requires conflict for them. But not for us. Our growth is natural and predetermined, limited only by our merits to unlock it. In a lesser way you have discovered a similarity with your training knowledge. This is something no other race has explored as deeply, and our files on you have taken priority in gathering. My ability to study them has been limited, but not completely blocked. You are stumbling upon a mission not inherent in your race, but you are drawn to it where we were born to one. You are brothers to us in some fashion I would like to explore but cannot. I do not know you, yet I know aspects of you better than you probably know yourself. For this reason, and our imminent doom, I am asking that you take possession of Maty. Protect it and use it. The lessons of so many from the past are stored here. Learn from them. Do not repeat their mistakes.”
“Why are you still here?” Morgan asked.
“Our analogs are not intelligent enough to operate independently forever. They require occasional direction. Some of had to stay to deal with the unpredictable. The future of this galaxy depends on it.”
“This galaxy is being consumed by the Hadarak.”
“That was not foreseen. They did not exist when the toxicity came. They were constructed since our time.”
“Constructed by what?” Morgan demanded.
“Those that nearly killed you. They lied about their origin. They created the Hadarak. The Hadarak serve them. I do not know why or where, but I know how. They are interacting with them as master. The biological coding and control is obvious when you have access to their neural net, and I do since they are hacking the Maty. They came here because of the secrets being discovered, and are orchestrating the assimilation. Now they seek to escape you before you learn the truth.”
“We were told the Hadarak originated from large beings inhabiting the gravity wells at the center of many galaxies,” Sara noted.
“Conscripted most likely. Our probes patrol the voids in the galaxy, but are limited in ability to monitor within the stellar masses. We do not have information cataloged on their spawn points, but the Hadarak genetic coding is consistent with such high energy environments. Throughout it is a command pathway being utilized by those you now hold prisoner. The odds of them finding and utilizing it are slim. There is a 99.9999824% probability that they created it.”
“What are they trying to absorb?” Morgan asked. “Why not just download the data?”
“The Maty is more than data. A great deal more. They have discovered a small facet of it. They do not know the greater significance. You must keep them from it. They will use it to enhance the chaos, not reduce it.”
“Did they cause the toxicity?” Sara asked.
“It is beyond their comprehension. We do not know who created it, but it is the work of an unseen enemy. It is not random or natural.”
“The PanNari said it was.”
“They are trying to grasp knowledge far beyond them and are interpreting it in the best way they can manage. Inaccuracy is to be expected. Records are not kept in multi-linguistics. You must learn our language to access the rest. I am speaking to you in yours because there is no time. You must safeguard our work, for it is for one of you that we built this place and have done all that we have. We have long hoped to find someone who has a sense of mission as we do. We have tried so long and so hard to find even the smallest inkling of it in another, but we have failed and acted as protectors in the interim. If we were ever to find another, the knowledge we have gathered is for you. To help you grow and discover if your mission is identical to ours or separate. And by helping you we may also learn more about our own. After all this time we had nearly given up hope, and now, on the edge of our deaths and failure to preserve this galaxy’s legacy, you arrive. Better late than never.”
Morgan smiled inside her helmet, having to focus to maintain the Essence bubble. “Where did the other Gahana go?”
“They were to run as far as they had to in order to escape the toxicity. I know initial exit vectors, but not a final destination. They cannot return now, even briefly, for it is far worse.”
“What is producing it?”
“We cannot find the source with our probes, and the nearer we get the greater the toxicity becomes. It shields itself in this manner and we are helpless to act personally. Our analogs have not succeeded in our stead. You are growing tired and must return us soon.”
“Nah, we’re just getting warmed up,” Sara said, drawing some Essence out of her Magicite to reinforce the bubble. “Keep talking…”
9
“What the fuck…” Morgan said, her jaw dropping as small beads of sweat rolled down her face as she and Sara continued to hold the Essence bubble longer than they normally would have. “You’re saying our Gamerscore affects the universe?”
“Games are a limited, but useful analogy,” the Gahana said flatly. “To address it such, our core mission is to tilt the alignment of the universe away from chaos and carnage. We do not understand why, but it is built into us the same way your genetic instincts are in you, though those are only basic survival programming…and that programming alters with each new spawn of the lifesprings based on those that have come before. If carnage has become dominant in the local region, then new races will start out with more carnage built into their instincts, and their bodies will be tailored toward those ends. Poison, fangs, life drainers…all of these are biological adaptations made by the lifesprings when the indigenous races and individuals become and employ such qualities. Thus the actions you take in life will add with others to tailor the starting equipment and tendencies of future spawned races.”
“And you’re here to make sure they end up as what?” Sara asked.
“We do not understand the end goal of our mission. Only the current priorities that compel us to act. We do not know why we are here without a full explanation, so we do what we can as we search for answers. No others that we have found have a mission encoded into their instincts. None at all. You appear to be developing one as individuals, and this is the first we have encountered this facet. In order to explore it further this facility and the other three in this galaxy must be protected from the Hadarak. Though we do not think they understand the tilt mechanism within the universe, their actions are predicated on destroying our work. Future races will be so inundated in what you call the darkside that only a very strong individual will be able to break free to chart another course, and in the case of the Hadarak, such an individual cannot exist. Defiance would have them killed before they could grow to the point of self-determination.”
“What happens if that wins out?”
“We have seen similar things happen before, and those that control the controlled eventually turn on each other causing a cataclysmic downfall of the system. Nearly all perish, and those that survive regroup in ways that allow more individual freedom and exploration. Or they all perish and are replaced by the lifesprings with a different tilt. It is not a binary choice, for there are man
y variables in play and we have not been able to chart them all. But for races such as the Hadarak, they destroy all that we are tasked with defending and cultivating, and futures spawns…whether through the lifesprings or regular births…pay the price for it.”
“How local is the effect?” Morgan asked.
“Often within one system, though we have seen larger effects. We have not been able to distill it down to mathematics, but it appears the more deeply you go in any direction, the larger a footprint you create.”
“Does this affect births?”
“The natural change in the genetics accomplish this on its own. Those are far easier to quantify. The lifesprings are beyond our ability to effectively measure.”
“Have you ever observed them?”
“On occasion we have predicted their occurrence and recorded it, though luck was a factor and we cannot reliably replicate the observation.”
“And you do this without Essence abilities?”
“Essence abilities would respond to the occurrence, not predict it…at least as far as we have learned from others. There is a structure to the universe. A complex structure that we are still grasping to derive, but what gains we have made give us some predictive ability.”
“And what happens when you create pockets of peace?” Sara asked.
“Change occurs based on it. If it comes in the wake of contestation, it has a positive effect. But let it linger and the changes that occur…”
“…are pacifism,” Morgan guessed.
“Sedation and stagnation as well. Those new races spawned by the lifesprings are progressively weaker and less inclined to defend themselves. If we do not protect them, they become prey. Only by limiting our assistance do they remain strong enough to promote healthy growth, though this means many individuals must be allowed to suffer and die as each race learns from failure…or embraces it.”
“You can’t fight their battles for them,” Sara summed up.
“Indeed. That was a lesson that we did not learn for some time. Withholding assistance appeared to go against our mission, and it wasn’t until we grew wiser in the understanding of our mission did certain nuances become visible. Your lightside philosophy is concurrent with our mission as we currently understand it, but it is incomplete.”
