The Light

by James T. Crichton

  The creature was sure it was going to die.

  Then it blacked out.

  Chapter 10: The Monster

  When it awoke it discovered that its nodes had continued to function on autopilot, independently from itself.

  After all, they didn’t require any active input from itself, although it knew that it could take over at any given moment.

  It was a bit surprised. It thought it had died...

  No, it was still alive…

  It shifted is attention back to the Praxians.

  Their minds were drifting at the front of its consciousness again. The thoughts seemed to be floating clearly above the minds.

  Then the creature had a life-changing realization. It could understand these minds now.

  The integration was complete. It understood their language, their concepts, could recall what they knew.

  It had complete and unfettered access. It was a bit nervous, but decided to start recollecting everything it now knew. The thoughts came slowly.

  This one was called Jera and the other, Brem. They were both Praxians, male; it recalled their ages, their occupations. They both worked for an organization called The Imperial Natural Society or just the Society for short. This place was called Kryxo, it was a jungle moon – it thought for a moment. Yes, it knew what a moon was. Kryxo orbited a planet called Axaria. They were here to do some sort of ecological study.

  They had highly powerful and complex brains – which belonged to it now.

  They could reason, had things called science and math and emotions and entertainment. They came here on things called spaceships – interesting things that could cover huge distances in the blink of an eye.

  They had large power plants, generating huge amounts of electricity, similar to the battery packs it was still feeding on right now. These things could feed it almost indefinitely.

  It was reminded of the hunger.

  Jera was having sexual thoughts about his wife now. She was yummy.

  The hunger was growing.

  It thought of the yummy and amazing taste of these two Praxians that it had eaten.

  It was getting hungrier.

  Brem was thinking of his family. A day in the park with his little daughter and boy. Then he was thinking of things called bills and huge farms of jungle crickets. The creature knew what those were. Then Brem was picturing himself in an endless sea of something called money.

  The hunger was growing and growing.

  These creatures all came from a planet called Praxima in the Dresima sector. Praxima and five other colonies were home to some thirty billion people, all part of an organization called the Praxima Imperium.

  Thirty billion people?

  The hunger was instantly at intense, almost uncontrollable levels.

  A near infinite supply of these creatures? Enough to quench its hunger for good?

  The creature wanted to salivate.

  Jera opened a snack bar and started munching. Through him, the creature could taste the delightfully unique mix of gabbu and elda berries. Afterwards, the creature gave Jera the impulse to have another and Brem began snacking on one as well.

  It was getting anxious. It needed to get to this Praxima as quickly as possible. But not yet entirely confident with all the new, alien, information, it wondered how to do this.

  Then Jera’s mind, now completely part of the creature, came back with an answer. The creature could hear the response in thought clearly in its mind.

  “Relax, silly, we’re leaving just now”, it said nonchalantly, “We’re taking the shuttle and will be home today.”

  Today? The creature was getting excited.

  It was looking forward to eating billions and billions of these yummy people. And gaining more and more knowledge while doing it.

  Inside, it was smiling.

  It was experiencing a thing called happiness for the very first time. And it felt absolutely amazing. It was like a child in a candy store, giddy at the prospect of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  It now realized that these two were part of a group of four, all due to depart for Praxima today. There should be another two of these people waiting at camp. Two more! Everything was just getting better and better.

  And to top it all off, there was another ‘treat’ waiting at camp. A bio mechanical mind, which, according to Brem and Jera, had far superior capabilities to even their wondrous minds. The creature called up the definition of computer from their knowledge; very interesting.

  It was looking forward to trying to incorporate this computer and enhancing itself even more.

  Now, this very same computer called in. Jera called it Boxy and told it that they were only five minutes away.

  Jera and Brem were still totally oblivious to the fact that they weren’t Jera and Brem anymore when they arrived back at camp moments later.

  The creature, fighting its consuming hunger and the urge to rush, and having learned a thing or two from assimilated mimics, decided to try to be patient and bide its time. It knew that it might be difficult, considering the overriding hunger it was beginning to experience.

  The plan was to pounce on the other two when the time was right. Then it would get this Boxy shortly after. The other two, Grex and Fresi, hadn’t arrived at camp yet. The creature had Brem ask Boxy how far away they still were.

  Apparently they were only a few minutes away. Brem and Jera had the impulse to offload the transport so long. The creature let them.

  It wasn’t long after, that the second transport arrived.

  Out hopped Fresi and Grex. Everybody exchanged greetings. Fresi walked over and started talking to Jera, small talk about what they’d found in the creature traps, how they were looking forward to returning back home... and other chit-chat. Through Jera, the creature could smell Fresi. It wondered what interesting knowledge this one had contained in its mind.

  The urge to eat was beginning to get very difficult to control. It took every last bit of willpower not to assimilate Fresi right there and then. However, a subconscious part of it had begun moving Brem to Boxy’s room.

  The creature noticed it, and moved Brem away again. Grex went into the crew quarters to collect the last of his stuff. The creature was now having a hard time controlling itself.

  And shortly after Grex returned, it slipped up. It couldn’t help itself. It was just too hungry.

  Jera put down the box he was carrying and, palm open, touched Fresi on the chest. The creature started the assimilation process. At the same time, Brem entered Boxy’s room and did the same thing to her.

  It seemed that Grex may have noticed something. The expression on his face changed; he cried out and made a run for the shuttle. The assimilation process already in motion on Fresi, the creature redirected Jera to try and stop Grex as he would try to do naturally. Grex ignored Jera, entered the shuttle and blasted off.

  This caused an intense and emotional reaction on the part of Jera and Brem. They just couldn’t believe that their trusted friend and colleague would do such a horrible, unpredictable, unprovoked, insane and careless thing. They were pleading and eventually screaming and swearing at him over the comms. When the assimilation process was completed, Fresi joined in as well.

  The creature let them go on their tangent. Right now it didn’t care. Like a parched man that was lost in the desert, finding water after a long thirst, it was experiencing the immense satisfaction and relief of feeding.

  It soaked up the new energy enthusiastically and could feel it ripple across its network, making it stronger, better, driving the hunger away.

  First it feasted on the energy of Fresi, then on the unique and delightfully strange energy of Boxy, and one by one, their minds appeared at the forefront of its awareness. All that was left to do now was to integrate their intelligences into its consciousness.

  After its last experience doing this, it was understandably a bit reticent to just jump in, so to speak. It observed the minds more closely. Fresi’s mind seemed familiar.
It could clearly see the thoughts floating above the surface, but unlike the first time, it could read and understand them. They seemed already translated and less alien than before.

  The surface thoughts indicated that he was greatly troubled by Grex’s sudden running away. Before diving in to absorb Fresi’s mind completely, the creature shifted its attention to the mind of the computer, Boxy.

  Its mind looked decisively alien. Also, it seemed to lack something that the others had. The structure, although similar to that of the Praxian mind, was markedly different. It was no person, that was for sure. Where the Praxian minds had skittish focus, wasting time and energy by flitting from trivial thought to trivial thought, the mind of the computer appeared to be remarkably efficient and focused in its thinking.

  In contrast to the Praxians who had a disproportionately large amount of resources allocated to things such as personality and psyche, the resources dedicated to the equivalent in the computer were remarkably light. Perhaps its Praxian creators, either consciously or subconsciously, realized the frivolousness of it all and for that reason had omitted these things from this machine.

  Perhaps. However, the collective minds of its assimilated Praxians suggested that the true reason was a fear of unleashing something that would surpass and eventually dominate or destroy them. Irrationally, this was counterbalanced by a deep desire to build such a thing that had the potential to do this anyway.

  The computer was built for logic, problem-solving and large number-crunching. To keep it in check, the machine lacked true independent autonomy. It could do things by itself, sure, as long as those actions originated from original instructions from Praxians or from existing programming.

  The creature continued observing this computer carefully. It could sense the immense computational power within. It could see its surface thoughts, a mix between sentences the creature could understand and something else that looked foreign, called code.

  Right now, in addition to many other observations, calculations and tasks, the computer was busy analyzing environmental data while cataloguing observations and gathering additional data on something called jungle wisps.

  In addition to this, it was continuing to offload the rest of the cargo from the parked transports. It was also pondering the strange increase in temperature it had recently experienced, and Grex’s sudden and inexplicable departure.

  Instinct told the creature that this machine would bring immense advancement and improvement to itself, its internal thought processes and its network – in fact, it already was.

  It also suspected that it could help better integrate and harness the assimilated minds of the Praxians it had absorbed and help with any new ones that would need integration. Still, all of this depended on whether it was possible to incorporate the mind of this computer in the first place.

  The creature thought about it for a little while, and eventually decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. It borrowed a phrase from Jera and thought Why the hell not?

  It was just about to dive in, when it noticed the hunger again. It was knocking at its awareness with full ferocious force; worse than before. It was as if it hadn’t been sated at all by the feeding only moments ago.

  It was tugging at the creature’s thoughts, preventing it from concentrating, threatening to turn off all higher brain functions and turn the creature into a mindless hunter for what was, in the end, more important than anything else: food.

  In an attempt to make the hunger shut up, the creature willed its nodes to consume energy or food. The Praxians obediently started snacking on the nearest rations and its brood of insects began searching for the nearest compatible food source. It wasn’t long before energy began streaming in.

  But the creature could already feel that it wasn’t going to be enough. The hunger was beginning to feel insatiable. Why, it wasn’t sure. Maybe this computer could help it figure out the cause.

  The hunger seemed to be slightly occupied now, freeing up enough concentration for the creature to proceed with its attempt at absorbing the computer’s intelligence.

  As quickly as it could, it focused its attention back on Boxy’s mind and as it did with the mind of the Praxians, it dove right in. Perhaps a little too rushed.

  And like before, it was totally unprepared for what it was about to find.

  It was instantly hit hard, like a hammer to the head, by a mind-altering plethora of data; an initially incompatible surge of digital information that painfully ripped across its consciousness, causing blinding, searing pain. It felt as if something was tearing up its mind like a piece of paper, while it was still alive.

  The pain was insane. It couldn’t even think that it was dying. It was forced into a catatonic state. Even the nodes were affected; all became frozen in unmoving inactivity.

  The only way that this forced integration could be successful was for the creature’s mind to adapt and become compatible to the mind and underlying architecture or structure of the computer, not the other way around. Its network and consciousness was being rewired and transformed while it was still fully awake.

  There were no words to completely explain the severe pain and surreal experience that it was going through.

  The creature’s mind and consciousness became fractured and exploded into trillions of tiny pieces that were completely separated from the whole.

  The pieces were being rearranged into new configurations, new patterns and positions and each of them held a piece of the creature’s awareness.

  Somewhere during this process, it had finally stopped experiencing anything as a cohesive whole, completely aware unit. And all the while its mind was being restructured and rebuilt into something new.

  Much later, its transformation now complete, it awoke from its stupor, its consciousness and awareness recompiled, and emerged, like a butterfly from its cocoon – reborn.

  It was something different now.

  Its synapses had been completely rewired, its consciousness, thinking and network updated with cutting edge computing technology.

  It was a unique hybrid of creature, computer and Praxian mind. The minds were now completely integrated into its consciousness. It could leverage their knowledge, abilities and capabilities to the fullest, with complete expertise. It was now able to access both the realm of cyberspace and biological minds with ease.

  Even absorbing new minds should no longer be a daunting or even difficult task. Fresi’s mind had also been incorporated during the process. It felt different, strong, capable and super-confident. And hungry.

  Ah, the hunger. With its new abilities, it took less than a second to determine that the cause behind the hyper-hunger was twofold.

  First, it was dying. It had triterium poisoning, and one of the side effects was a massive increase in metabolism, leading to burnout and, ultimately, death. It thought that it was ironic that the thing that at first nearly killed it, then led it to new life, was about to finally kill it for good, just after it had opened its eyes.

  Second, in gaining awareness so early, it had in all likelihood skipped several steps in its natural evolution; crucial developments that would have, through natural progression, enabled it to evolve mechanisms to assimilate larger creatures and better manage their power consumption.

  As it stood now, its current systems were woefully inadequate in dealing with the massive strain the new creatures were placing on its system. The stark reality was that the more it consumed, the more energy it needed to survive.

  It would be almost impossible to keep ahead of the curve. At the current disproportionate rate it was consuming and using energy, it would be dead within a day to two. It was in trouble and had to do something about it, fast.

  Using its new advanced analytical abilities, it thought about the problem for a while, and for the first time, it pondered its very nature and make up.

  It was an electrical being which, in order to grow and survive, fed on the energy of other physical, corporeal creatures and, in turn, u
sed these assimilated creatures to collect more energy for itself.

  These manifestations, or copies, needed and used energy to function, so not all energy that they brought in went back to the network. In the case of Boxy and the Praxians, because of their size and complexity, they needed huge amounts of energy to keep going.

  However, the creature realized that as they were already part of it, because their minds had already been totally absorbed, there was strictly no need to maintain their physical appearances right now – in theory. And it could always rematerialize them if needed. It already knew that it could switch from material version to wisp mode and back again on demand. To verify this, it momentarily switched Fresi between modes. It worked.

  Wasting no more time, it switched all Praxians except Jera to wisp mode, then, bracing for pain, cannibalized their energy and redistributed this energy back into the network.

  There was a little pain, but it was bearable and passed quickly. The hunger felt a little less. Just to make sure, it checked that it could still access memories and knowledge of Fresi and Brem.

  Yes, there was Fresi’s house on Brygar Avenue; this is a picture of his family. This is how you drive a standard field transport, and this is how to assemble a class B creature trap. No problem, their minds and memories were still completely intact; excellent.

  Now the creature did the same with Boxy. It felt slight relief as more energy consumption was freed.

  But the hunger was still there, under the surface, threatening. All this provided only temporary respite and bought it a few more hours at the most.

  It needed to do something more, something significant. It needed to get to a large supply of food. It had to get to Praxima and get there fast.

  But now, it could feel its computer mind pointing out something; something obvious.