Her curiosity led her to try to find that out and eventually she picked up on traces of something, which finally led her to her ultimate discovery.
Deep within the code, Helley had discovered a back-door; a portal to the other side.
New Helley remembered getting shivers on her skin when she realized what she had discovered.
She knew she’d be able to open the portal, given a few days’ preparation. And she wondered what she’d do then; probably send a probe through first.
But somehow she wasn’t entirely sure if she actually wanted to open it; the after-effect of her nightmares causing her childhood fear to ring bells of caution, warning her to stop, warning her that she had no idea what she would find on the other side or what the consequences might be if she opened it.
Her scientific curiosity wanted her to dismiss her foolish, irrational fear and press ahead to this ultimate discovery with excitement.
After all, she’d come this far – so why stop now? She just had to be careful, that’s all. Right?
Sleep eluding her, Helley was still staring at the ceiling, when suddenly, the ship-wide emergency alarm sounded.
As they were in an empty part of space, and a technical fault was unlikely, it could only mean one thing.
They’d been found.
Chapter 16: Praxima
The moment had come at last. The creature had finally arrived at Praxima, home to some twenty billion people.
It had been a long and arduous journey, filled with challenges, evolution and growth. The creature had, with the assistance of its advanced computing capabilities, insights and thinking, learned to rapidly assimilate new objects and gain new abilities in a matter of hours.
Abilities which it knew would’ve taken it millions of years to have learned naturally, if ever. Thanks to this, it had figured out a way to stay connected to the WispNet through a subspace comms link back to Kryxo.
And while it was rolling across Kryxo, it discovered that it could assimilate quicker, simply by eating faster, and when in wisp mode it could alternate the color of its appearance, from a default white, to any visible color in the spectrum; it could even appear invisible, as long as it remained stationary.
And thanks to several new techniques it had learned at the mining colony, like using cyberspace to take control of other computers and subsequently deactivate perimeter fences and activate fire alarms, and in the subterranean caverns and living complexes – large wisp blobs could assimilate more, quicker – as well at the small space port at the colony – it was completely possible to assimilate an entire shuttle or in this case, five, and fly them into space successfully – and using the mimic and Praxian trait of deception and lies, it had bested and now controlled the Imperium’s most powerful fleet, which it had rematerialized, for the most part, and flown at high warp straight back to Praxima as soon as it could.
It made sure the crews had no recollection of the battle, and as far as they were concerned, they were following their original plan and were heading home.
For the creature, traveling at warp for its very first time was an amazing and eye-opening experience which gave it a chance to contemplate future possibilities of countless other planets and food sources it could reach with this wonderful technology.
It was anxious and desperate to get to Praxima with its large bounty of food...
The creature had tried to use its recently found analytical skills to find a way out of its predicament, but so far to no avail.
The fact remained that the more it consumed, the more energy it burned, and the more it needed to consume to stay alive. Kryxo and the fleet were mere stopgaps or fillers for its main course of Praxima.
While it waited, the creature took some time to inspect and take stock of its newly assimilated Praxians.
In a way it was fortunate that it managed to bag the flagship, the Dawn, as it turned out there was a priceless prize on board – its leader,
Admiral Prox; a master tactician and strategist, with invaluable military knowledge and experience, who, as luck would have it, had ideas of his own and had already formulated a realistic plan to take Praxima.
The creature had found the story of the Admiral intriguing and even felt a tiny amount of what could be called sympathy for him. At least the Admiral would be going home to exact his revenge after all, it thought, even though it was sure to be wildly different than what he’d imagined.
With the Admiral, the creature knew it had added a most potent component to itself and as a result, would now be almost impossible to beat. Not that it was completely without weakness, of course, as it had painfully discovered during the battle with the fleet.
Thankfully, because it had access to military-grade warp drives, it had been able to stop the one person that knew how it could be defeated from warning Navy Command at Praxima, by jamming all subspace comms frequencies to prevent him from sending any messages and finally, by arriving at Praxima space hours before him.
To catch Grex even more off-guard and delay his escape response, the creature had materialized Jera, Brem and Fresi to greet him from the bridge of the Dawn, for extra dramatic effect – which worked beautifully as Grex was part of it now.
Once the fleet was in Praxima space, it arrived at the home world itself quickly, and with the Admiral’s passcodes and a little bit of hacking, the system sensor nets and the orbital defenses were disabled and all computer networks in structures and satellites in orbit were infiltrated – not that it was strictly necessary, as no one had expected the fleet home so early; the fleet’s arrival caught everyone by complete surprise.
Short-range communication to planetside was jammed and fighters were positioned to each of the orbital stations, hotels and the five Navy shipyards.
Now, with the fleet in orbit high above Praxima, the creature felt a powerful sensation of familiarity stirring in its many thousands of assimilated Praxians.
A word was echoing strongly in its consciousness: Home. Even though the creature had never been here before, it felt an almost overwhelming longing and urge to return.
To be reunited with family, loved ones and the familiar once more. It thought about it for a second, then it updated its plans accordingly, concentrated, selected a couple hundred Praxian nodes for this task, and made all other thoughts in these nodes irrelevant.
Then it made transport vessels available. Go home it said and felt its Praxians rushing obediently to the transports in joyous excitement.
Not long afterwards, packed transports were landing near residential areas of several cities on Praxima.
***
Later, Braxa walked through the open garden-gate of his house.
It was a lovely summer’s day, the flowers were in full bloom and the garden looked beautiful. He felt the warm heat of the sun on his back and took a deep breath of fresh air.
Next door, the neighbor’s children were playing and laughing. He couldn’t remember when last he’d been back, how he got here, where he’d been and what he’d been doing.
All he knew was that he’d been away for far, far too long, that he was really glad to be home – to at long last see his wife and daughter again.
Their pet jixxly, Ixxly, came scampering excitedly across the garden to greet him, barking happily and loudly. It went silent as soon as he put out a hand to pat it.
Braxa didn’t notice as right then the front door opened, revealing his daughter Anandi and his wife Gita, their faces beaming with happy surprise.
“Daddy!”, “Brax!” they exclaimed as they hurriedly came running down the garden path, into his longing, loving and warm embrace.
***
With most of its Praxians successfully reunited with their loved ones, and the first phase of the plan well underway, the creature’s time had finally arrived.
Using the Admiral’s tactical knowledge, and the strategy of hitting multiple locations hard and fast with the element of surprise, to disorient the enemy and divide and weaken its response; the creature quickly pos
itioned its vessels to effectively surround the globe at different strategic locations. Not wasting any more time, it instructed its vessels to descend.
Once the vessels had breached the atmosphere, it switched them into large wisp mode, then divided some further into hundreds of thousands of smaller wisps, each embedded with the electronic signature of friendly Imperium vessels, which it then dispersed widely, with the goal of covering a much larger landing radius, or area of influence as the Admiral called it.
The remaining vessels in space were ordered to assimilate the stations and satellites in orbit. And following the Admiral’s original plan, vessels were dispatched simultaneously to the five colonies as well.
At last the creature was raining down on the world of these Praxians. It quivered with excitement and nervous anticipation as its multitude of wisps drifted down slowly to the surface from a dizzy height.
From up high, the creature could see cities, forests, mountains, patchwork tapestries of fields, rivers cutting through the countryside, and deep blue oceans, sparkling in the sun.
The hunger was growing now, and the creature promised itself that it would unleash it momentarily, and would indulge itself in the abundant plenty freely. Only a few more moments to wait...
The first group of wisps plunged into the ocean and began feasting on massive schools of fish right below. Several more wisps plopped down into the water nearby.
Other groups now landed on farmland, forests and wildlife reserves and started consuming livestock, wildlife, crops, trees and Praxians indiscriminately.
Elsewhere, wisps drifted down onto the busy skyways, enveloping and consuming dozens of vehicles in their wake, and began spreading in all directions on the extensive routes.
Others now landed on and ran along the power network, infiltrating homes and businesses, eventually reaching the power plants themselves; surprising inhabitants, office and power plant workers alike, by zapping them from electrical outlets, conduits and assimilated appliances unexpectedly.
Dozens of wisps landed on the cities across the planet, drifting effortlessly through the busy skyways, leaving their indelible mark on the vehicles as they passed through, to land on the tall skyscrapers, and eventually the bustling throngs of people below.
Military bases, Imperial Government buildings, even the Imperial Palace, with the Emperor himself, along with his harem and entourage, were all consumed.
When it became clear that no strong or effective resistance was being mounted against it, the creature took a momentary reprieve from analysis and intellectual thinking and gave itself over to the hunger.
It began relishing the full glory and splendor of the seemingly endless feast and indulged and gorged on the many hapless billions with reckless abandon.
Then it gorged and gorged and gorged some more.
Elsewhere, the vessels it had dispatched earlier had arrived at the colonies, and similar events were unfolding there.
It was operating now more on instinct than conscious direction; its nodes were operating semi-autonomously with the task of assimilation, and it was letting its creativity run freely.
Here, after being assimilated in their subterranean nests and tunnels, tens of millions of Praxian insects exited the underground and their dark hiding places, through various nooks and crannies, and quickly began spreading in all directions.
These millions swept through houses and streets, in waves of unstoppable crawling and flying swarms, overwhelming everything in their wake.
And here, a pulsating, buzzing black swarm of flying insects subdued an escaping, terrified crowd.
Here, the creature used lightning arcs to quickly do the same. Here, it was a troupe of vervix, quickly maneuvering the intricate jungle of a shopping center, to effectively get to and tag frightened shoppers.
There, it was a massive glowing rolling ball, rolling across a marketplace over screaming crowds. And here, in the guise of several fierce-looking nimars, it was chasing terrified civilians down the street. Here, it covertly took over the staff of an entire office building with no-one being the wiser.
And in the background, in an unseen fifth column advance, after its modest seeds had been planted through its returning Praxians, it was spreading like infectious wildfire, branching out in all directions through the physical, intricate and interconnected social network of the populace, in a rapid campaign of touch.
Each Praxian node and every newly assimilated one, was compelled to quickly and aggressively seek out, travel to and assimilate all known associates, family members and colleagues including any unassimilated individuals and electronic devices, electronic equipment, plants and pet animals it encountered along the way.
And here, during a fierce and ominous electrical storm with heavy torrential rains outside, after a lone wet vervix had managed to gain access to a mega stadium during the intense inter-world finals of a keldo ball game, the creature rippled like the ripple from a newly added stone to a pond, through the five hundred thousand full-capacity crowd.
The creature was gaining more and more unstoppable momentum during each passing moment.
It was feeling elated. As it was riding the giddy and blissful feeding frenzy, it was only marginally aware of the energy and the biological and digital minds that came streaming in, seemingly on a separate thread to its main consciousness.
Brief flashes of recently assimilated memories flashed across its awareness.
A massive blob of light, enveloping more than half of the sprawling metropolis that was Praxima Prime.
A glowing, slowly growing elongated blob, floating in mid-air superimposed on heavy traffic on the skyway.
A futile battle at a military base with large balls of lights, large mechs, laser cannons and explosives – all just exacerbating the situation.
A swarm of insects engulfing someone, seemingly going into his eyes, ears and screaming mouth.
An aerial view of a city, one half a sphere of glowing light, the other in flames. Visuals of chaos and fireballs, as people frantically tried to escape but had fiery accidents instead.
A view now from a high penthouse apartment of five skyscrapers nearby, the lights and buildings of a sprawling metropolis in the background.
The nearby skyscrapers’ interiors glowing a radiant white through a multitude of windows. Many arcs of what appeared to be lightning began reaching out like tributaries from the windows into those of the neighboring buildings.
The viewer had leaned forward to get a closer look just as an arc bolted through the window, zapping him right in his face.
A first-person view of a man that had just narrowly dodged a flaming blur of a crashing skycar; the man lay now in dusty rubble, stunned but ok.
A person appeared, offering to help and the man reached up to grab the helping hand.
A view from a woman, who had just opened up the door to find her long ago estranged daughter there in a surprise visit, who as soon as she could, did not hesitate to reach out to quickly touch her mother’s arm in an unstoppable movement.
More and more memories flashed across the creature’s awareness.
There was an interesting one now, which made the creature half pay attention. It was near a temple, devoted to a long-lost god.
There was a magnificent orb of light nearby and a large and growing crowd of people were gathered around it, possibly in their thousands, all staring at it in astonished reverie.
A prophet had addressed them and with a moving and powerful sermon had declared that the light was their god and savior returned, as promised, bringing an end to thousands of years of suffering and persecution.
The moment of their salvation had finally arrived. As true believers, they had to embrace it willingly and give themselves to the light to realize the promise of eternal life and the dawn of a new age. Shortly afterward, people clamored to enter the light.
A slew of new memories and thoughts now came in; they were filled with religious undertones and themes of self-sacrifice. Inte
resting, the creature thought.
They were giving themselves as offerings. It liked this new notion of being called a god.
A little later, the prophet joined his flock. The creature realized in surprise, that the prophet had already been assimilated a while back, but was now just demonstrating to the reluctant few that were left, that it was safe to enter – which they did, when the prophet emerged, seemingly unscathed.
In a way, they were right about everlasting life, the creature thought. Their thoughts and memories would indeed live on, in itself, and if all goes well, for eternity. This was by no means an isolated incident and throughout the planet, people of all faiths were flocking to large blobs of light willingly.
And as their god, the creature embraced their sacrifice with open arms and selfishly consumed their energy and redistributed it into its larger self. It was indeed the dawn of a new era.
The creature thought about these gods for a brief moment and wondered where they were. They were intriguing and judging by the stories, legends and scriptures, it knew they were the ultimate prize and once all this was done, it would seek them out.
Find them and eat them. Integrate their godly powers into its own and make them part of its flock.
The creature’s attention span was short and in the midst of the feeding frenzy it wasn’t long before it lost its focus again to drift and ride the elation of the seemingly endless feeding orgy which went on and on for what felt like blissful eternity.
But about a day or so later, without warning, the main feast came to a sudden and surprisingly abrupt halt.
The constant stream of energy and minds had come to a jarring end. The creature had consumed all there was to consume on Praxima and the colonies. Eaten all that could be eaten.
For a moment, it was left stunned, annoyed and confused about what had happened and why the endless bliss had stopped. It searched a bit, and found a few groups of stray Praxians, some attempting to hide out in the countryside and others underground, and like a child would slurp up the last remnants of delicious juice from an essentially empty glass with a straw, the creature slurped up these as well.
The Light Page 11
