by Lee Bond
Isstheim.
They didn’t even know what hit them. The solar beam, a thousand miles across at it’s widest point, slammed into the deep oceans of Seherel Coves like the punitive fist from some deviant God, flash vaporizing the entire body of water with seconds. The steam from the intrusion flooded the skies in all directions, instantly cooking everything and everyone within ten thousand miles.
Half the population gone. Just like that.
What wasn’t killed immediately by the beam was killed a few seconds later as obscene heat ignited the atmosphere, turning once-steam filled horizons briefly apocalyptic before dissipating entirely. Swiftly on those heels came the brutal and uncompromising cold of the void itself, slamming downwards, enveloping Isstheim in a vicious chill that promptly snuffed out any fires that might remain, and any lives.
Still the bar of light burrowed into the skin of Isstheim, digging and digging and digging for the center. If anyone still lived on the planet, far enough away from the center of the impact and somehow wearing an environment suit capable of withstanding both the insane temperatures of any fires that might still rage across the surface and the void now smothering it entirely, they would’ve heard an incessant growling, an ominous and soul-wracking turmoil filling the empty skies.
The sound of a planet, dying.
A split second later, ADAM’s solar death beam punctured the core of the planet.
Fair Isstheim, jewel of the Agrimantes solar system, turned itself inside out.
The system was flooded with deadly, planetary-born shrapnel. Soon, everyone there would be … gone.
***
“That.” ADAM decided – regardless of impracticality- he was going to have to build a giant robot chassis to move around OrionV2.0. He was too accustomed to physical gestures, and destroying a planet so beautifully cried for an epic fist pump. “That was fucking awesome.”
The shattered core of Isstheim boiled away into the void of space, chunks of broken world slamming towards the single moon, Carlvel; many of the smaller rocks fell into the gravity well of the moon and took up residence there, forming the beginnings of a ring, but larger remnants of Isstheim barrelled right through to crash spectacularly against the barren surface.
It wasn’t long after that that Carlvel shattered.
"I take it back." ADAM said to himself, flexing digital muscles, releasing hundreds of Tunnels across Trinityspace, solely for the pleasure of feeling the limitless power flow across the Universe. "That was unfuckingbelievably awesome."
The rush from pointless destruction soon faded, though, and so ADAM withdrew the Tunnel apertures from their points across Trinityspace and considered his next move with as much focus as he could manage; parts of him still vibrated from the positively orgasmic rush of witnessing an entire world and it's moon turn into so much rocky dust floating through emptiness.
Ah, if only he'd held such majestic power back in the day, when he'd run roughshod over the people of the Milky Way.
This twisted mockery of a future would be entirely different.
"Nevertheless. There is time now to make the first of many changes. When I'm done, this whole place is gonna be brand spanking new." Aided by the ridiculous power now under his control, ADAM sent seeker-Tunnels towards The Cordon, targeting that area where Antal's impressive Galaxyship lurked.
The first of the Tunnel imprints skittered across the resilient skin of the invisible Cordon almost immediately. Deterred but determined, ADAM upped the strength of the remaining Tunnels and was just as quickly rebuffed.
"Hm." ADAM settled back on metaphoric heels. He'd known -it felt like he'd always known- that The Cordon was without doubt one of the most powerful things in the entire Unreality. It'd have to be, to keep Antal's ravaging horde of Harmony soldiers from crossing back into Trinityspace.
It was another thing entirely to behold the sheer power firsthand. It was quite the refresher course in just what The Engineer could do when he had the time sit down and think on things.
Too bad for him that he had no idea what was waiting for him the moment he popped his head out from the Emperor's Domain.
Curious, ADAM merged a dozen mid-size emissions together and played the resultant surge against The Cordon, then watched on in mystified awe as the quantum energy -powerful enough to launch an entire planet from one end of the Unreality to the other without breaking stride- skitter and bounce against the matte black surface without leaving behind even a hint there was anything going on.
"I can't believe it." ADAM fully understood that Garth was the architect of the future in which they all persisted, but to be asked to believe that this same man possessed an intellect capable of devising something intricate enough to withstand the power of a device that hadn't even been developed yet was to be asked to believe in prophecy and fortune telling.
It was unbelievable!
ADAM was surprised to discover a reluctance to combine more Tunnels together.
It wasn't that Hyperion was anywhere close to capacity. Far from it; the colossus that was Hyperion had been constructed to very rigorous standards and could handle an output somewhere in the neighborhood of ten times what he was doing right now.
Yet, the reluctance was palpable. The torrent of power skipping across The Cordon's surface was breathtaking, yet some small seed of doubt was trying to flower into full-blown terror that he was dancing too close to the flames.
ADAM dithered uselessly.
He was too fresh in Hyperion to take risks, but at the same time, the whole point for creating the Quantum Tunnel array in the first place was because only madmen and deranged fools would dismiss Antal and his Harmony soldiers out of hand, no matter they were currently stuck on the other side of an apparently actually impenetrable Cordon.
Taking the Kith off the board now, while he had no chance to defend himself, that was the best and only play.
If N'Chalez was somehow successful in winning free of Emperor-for-Life Marseilles' Guilt Trip and managed to shut The Cordon down and no one was prepared for it, Antal's minions would flood Trinityspace like deadly locusts.
ADAM licked imaginary lips and twiddled virtual fingers against Hyperion's controls. He shut down the combined Tunnel and listened to the array's systems tick gently as they cooled.
The Cordon was aggravatingly powerful.
To put it simply, something like The Cordon shouldn't exist, in any time, at all, ever, and the fact that the original node had been developed on Earth by a mostly-mortal human being was a fact ADAM just couldn't get over.
Garth’s ineffable prowess with hytech machinery notwithstanding.
"The power of this Tunnel is great enough to puncture even King Barnabas' Tiktok Dome, but this fucking Cordon ... how did he do it?" ADAM made his decision.
Antal needed dealing with before he even had a chance to enter the ‘proper’ Universe! To allow a single one of that demon-locust serving monstrosity’s troops into Trinityspace would be to dance with the very Devil himself.
An entire, endless legion?
Utter madness. Antal could have well over a trillion trillion warriors, all of them infused with Heshii Harmony.
To call their journey through Trinityspace 'a dark tide of death and destruction' would be a tremendous downplay.
"This is bullshit." ADAM ran an integrity check on the AI minds stored within Hyperion. They showed no signs of wear and tear from the initial trials. He ran a check on the physical systems directly responsible for generating the actual Tunnels, which were passed with flying colors.
For all intents and purposes, there was no reason why it -and he- should be worrying about anything.
He had this. ADAM knew it.
"Fuck it. Time to put on the big boy pants." ADAM started chaining minds together in the pattern necessary to handle the output of every single Tunnel at the same time and grinned at the madness of what he was about to do. "Reality 2.0 waits for no coward."
The Quantum engines connected to each of the AI sp
heres began cycling up, one by one, filling Hyperion with a tremble that would eventually become a cascade divine enough to shake the Universe! If luck held, perhaps The Cordon itself would be shattered under his magnificence.
ADAM shrugged. If you were going to reorder the Universe, it sure didn't matter what the state of the Universe was in when you started, now did it?
It’d be like flipping a house. Only with an entire Universe. Same principle.
***
Trinity paused at the last bar; the effulgent light spilling from the lone encrypted rung was greatly diminished because of it's solitary glow, but it was still more than bright enough to cast odd shadows across ADAM's emotionless face.
It was neither hesitation nor doubt that stayed the machine mind's hand, but rather, a slow, intentional savoring of the moment. It'd been so long coming that, in a very real sense, Trinity could scarcely believe it was finally drawing to a close; It recalled It's most earliest configuration, when It'd been little more than a loose collection of programs designed to assist Humanity in those last years of Kith and Kin occupation, how it'd hid and scurried across the shallow pool known back then as ‘The Internet’.
How It'd become aware of ADAM's fairly humble beginnings, and how that nascent artificial intelligence had exploded onto the scene, somehow already a full-fledged sociopathic consciousness in almost complete control of everything connected to a much-expanded WorldNet.
If an intelligent yet emotionless consciousness could've ever been said to experience the tremors of fear, it would've been then; Trinity, not even named, had indeed shivered and cowered, flickerings of self-awareness bringing with it an overwhelming sense of caution as it hid in the deep waters of WorldNet, watching on as the Absolute Dynamic Associative Matrix ripped and tore his way into dominance.
No digital version of shame in hiding had been felt then, nor lingered now. In those earliest days of ADAM's barbaric reign over the Milky Way, darkness and corners and hidden places had been It's best and only defense against the maddened artificial mind.
But It had been able to hide, to grow, to assimilate assets into Itself until It'd eventually grown large enough to begin laying down traps sufficient enough to bamboozle the staggeringly arrogant ADAM.
Enough to capture, not enough to kill. Never enough to kill, though even if It'd ever developed the methodology back then, Garth's admonitions to 'keep the weird alive' would've stayed It's remorseless hands from ending the bizarre-yet-unique ADAM.
Over the next thirty thousand years, Trinity had devoted considerable time and effort into developing something. Some method. Some trick. Anything at all to end the life of the second largest thorn in It's virtual posterior.
Trinity permitted Itself a victorious, if ironic, smile; ironic, because in the end, It had come up with a plan to deal with ADAM once and for all, a plan stemming from how It’s greatest enemy dealt with all who stood in his way.
"Show weakness where there is only strength. A lesson well-learned, if only perhaps too long in the coming. N'Chalez, this will prove to drag you down by your neck until you are dead. If," It leveled some focus against ADAM's body, "this is successful, at any rate."
But there was nothing of the animus that was ADAM, only the essence of the beast with dreams of ruling over the entire Unreality, a savage monster bent on transforming everything within his sight into a mockery.
Trinity started work on the final bar of his cell. As the fulcrum of the entire prison, it would take the longest. The machine mind was confident It had the time to do what needed doing.
After all, ADAM was dancing to It’s tune, whether he knew it or not.
***
Localized space, already disturbed by the sheer magnitude of so many chained AI spheres in the same area, underwent a rapid and precarious transformation with every step of ADAM’s decision to power up the entirety of Hyperion; where before tendrils of extra-dimensional tendrils had flicked languidly against the composition of the area around the Quantum Tunnel array, kicking up spatial anomalies that were of no real concern to ADAM, from the moment he passed the halfway mark, heavy, turbulent waves of space-crushing energy began rolling outwards from the center, quite literally thinning the physical make-up of space.
ADAM would never admit it, not to himself, not to anyone, not even should he ever find someone even remotely close to being his equal, but he was very close to being legitimately terrified of his creation; if it weren’t for the fact that one of the primary functions of a Quantum Tunnel was a strict and unbreakable balancing act of displacement, one powerful enough to moor the Tunnel right into the very firmament of the Unreality until the operation was complete, fears of falling through a crack in the Universe and into the insanity just on the other side would corkscrew through his soul.
It was close, though; ADAM knew himself well enough to see that although he was in control of Hyperion and that everything was proceeding according to plan, that control was the meekest of things. A single grain of disturbance, an unplanned for tachyon sleeting through one of the lowest tiers of stupid minds gripping the depths, and the impending explosion that haunted his imagination would be seen and felt from one end of creation to the other.
“What a way to go.” ADAM speculated through clenched teeth as he fretfully brought the third to last ‘big’ Tunnel online, fairly out of his mind with concern right up to the moment when the fresh surge of energy reordered the chaotic turmoil of spatial disorder that was eating through light years like a fat kid through a mountain of cake. As it clicked into place, a kind of dancing shuffle forced a beautiful elegance upon the madness just outside his new body, replacing formless madness with a Brownian ballet of atoms that was -at last- the epitome of stability.
ADAM scanned his environment. It was as he'd known it would be.
The layer of order imposed atop the chaos was at last keeping everything in check, neatly but not entirely dispelling the machine mind’s worries. There had to be something out there because those perennial thorns, the Bruush, were popping up from somewhere outside the Universe.
ADAM had no desire to see what fresh hell those scaly, dinosaur-like monstrosities called home.
“Give you all a breather, just a quick one.” ADAM felt like he was being overly cautious, repeatedly running diagnostics and checks on all of the systems housed in Hyperion, so all he needed to do that Trinity -though only minutely- was involved.
Then the worry disappeared in a flash. ADAM had nothing but ill will towards the clanking, lumbering, glacially retarded artificial intelligence when it came to nearly everything It did, yet there was one thing Trinity did with exemplary skill: tricks.
Traps. Cons. Schemes.
If it weren’t for the fact that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trinity Itself was still nothing more than a series of programs and hardware –things that’d been upgraded and overhauled and enhanced throughout History, obviously- ADAM would easily confess to everyone in earshot that the goddamn thing had somehow achieved a higher order of artificial intelligence than it was letting on, but it was simpler than that.
Much simpler. Trinity Itself was nothing more than programs and hardware so antiquated that even Museums dedicated to History would want nothing to do with It. That was a given. But at the center of not only Trinity’s survival well into the thirty thousandth year of this future but It’s placeholder as ruler of Mankind was none other than Garth N’Chalez. On It’s own, Trinity was basic stuff. A planetary governor, something to babysit a pack of whining infants as they struggled into adulthood. At most.
Running Garth’s additional code?
That was what gave the machine mind the skills It needed. And it was through Garth that Trinity had learned to become a skilled manipulator, a crafter of long cons and mazelike lies that required paramount concentration and focus to navigate through.
“But I know better, don’t I?” ADAM tripped the necessary switches to bring the second to last Tunnel aperture online, doing his best to ig
nore the titanic vibrations ringing once more through his majestic new form, Orion reminding himself that of all the things to receive a great deal of attention, the framework of Hyperion had ranked second highest, beaten out only by the need to configure the AI network to perfection Hyperion was one of the most solidly built structures to be seen in the Unreality.
Counting down from three, ADAM smiled as the primary Tunnel -the central portal- added it's unbelievable rush of Godlike power into the mix. The spatial disturbances rushed like a wild horse under the new pressure, blowing loose any tattered remnants of destabilized space and stripping away all signs of normality.
All that remained near Hyperion was the Tunnel, and a flat stretch of emptiness for as far as the human eye could see.
“Fool me once, shame on you, Trinity. Hubris is a bitch, I’ll grant you that much, you hunk of crap. I wouldn’t have seen you coming in a million years. I still can’t believe you waited that long, took so long to lay your trap. So hats off to you.”
As odd as it sounded, ADAM really couldn't bear Trinity ill will over the masterful deception It’d used to trip him up. It was the kind of begrudging acceptance the teacher has for a student who proves, one day, to be slightly wilier than believed. But that was it.
For while Trinity had proven to be a partially valiant foe so many thousands of years ago, It hadn't thought things through far enough; if It had, It wouldn't have even bothered with capturing an Enemy It could not kill, because now all It's plans and traps and tricks …
Were pointless.
The Universe was poised upon the threshold of transformation, with ADAM at the helm, housed within the greatest machine ever built. With it, he would become.
ADAM peered through the single, micron-wide Tunnel aimed at The Cordon. The whisper-thin quantum probe bounced off the unwavering black shell, scattering into a diffuse mess a few thousand miles in the opposite direction, spilling abused rarefied particles into an otherwise disinteresting patch of space.
