The Futility Wars

by Magnus Thollander

  Matthias looked at the "cap" He thought it would be a metallic helmet like riot gear or a military cap but not just a tiny metallic flat top. He felt silly putting what looked like a metallic plate on his head, the alien just watched it stay there for a moment until Matthias felt it stick. He removed his hand and the plate was on top of his head. "Now what?" he said. Alien pushed a button and a small capsule released "This will kill you, you will feel nothing and will wake up next time inside a base, you will be a Warrior if you consume" the alien said.

  Matthias took the pill and swallowed it, He waited a moment and nothing happened. The alien pushed a button on the computer and stood in the corner. Matthias saw something in the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. He saw what he could describe as atoms or pixels, he was not sure but what he saw scared him. He laid down on the bed "What am i seeing? What is this?" said Matthias.

  "You are in the process, you will know shortly" said the alien. Matthias chuckled. "Seems, The process needs to be upgraded i know a few faster ways to die than just waiting in a room."

  "You do not need to speak or understand, you are in the process, No more questions. Will slow down the process" Matthias just looked around the room and saw the pixels more and more, He just laid there and waited. The alien closed the computer and took off the plate from his head. "So? Did it work, because i feel alive" said Matthias with a snide.

  "Come, we will go together to the Shell, and you will select a Shell. Will explain on the way." said the alien. Matthias and the alien got into the gravity chamber and it began to switch to normal gravity, Matthias panicked and the alien just gripped his shoulder, so he could not move. The door opened and Matthias felt fine "Why am i fine? Did you cure me?" he said while wiping sweat of his brow. "You are in the beginning of the process, follow me" the alien lead him down a elevator directly to his ship.

  Matthias left the elevator and entered the inside of the ship and saw a million "Shells" like he said, but they were giant spaceships "You may now select one or i will select one for you, The process has completed you are now a Warrior. You are now bound to the pact, you may never attack a Human or anyone with the convoy. You will forever defend the Milky Way and this will be your battleground forever, until you die a hero."

  Matthias nodded his head, he heard about this from television and read it from the website. This galaxy was big enough for him, and if he had to live a few thousand years exploring and living that would be his price. "You are now ready to know, you are dead the moment you put the device on your head, your body is still in the room. I uploaded you into the Gathering where all Warriors gather before they choose a Shell. I made a copy from your environment so you could process the information. You will lose what you have in time, this is called the bleeding effect. You will become pure Warrior soon." said the alien.

  Matthias looked around and knew something was wrong when he saw the pixels and could survive in the normal gravity, but he was tricked really well he pointed his finger to a Spaceship and felt a connection. He uploaded himself into the Shell and got a huge upload of technology, star maps, and several strings of DNA sequence that had a complete copy of himself and anything else that might have been useful for a new race. Matthias processed the information in what felt like milliseconds, before today he never knew what a hyper drive was, but today he knew. He plotted a course across the galaxy, and he set his sight on the "southern" part of the galaxy, he figured he would move away from the center of the galaxy instead of closer to it. Since he guessed the other humans and warriors would move toward the center for the more plentiful and rich prospects. Matthias was happy with just himself out there exploring the space. He set course and calculated his fuel, he knew where he wanted to be and how to get there. He undocked from the giant ship, downloaded his data from the cloud and sent a message out that Matthias was alive, and then set course for the hyper lane leading "south".

  Year 2195, Unknown Location

  Matthias kept processing information about the technology in his data banks, and he saw several faults in the main programming of the drones, He kept correcting faults, removing redundancies from their programming, he even increased the power to the drills in expense of their shields. He managed to re-route the power with a few programs and checks. The shield was just as strong but took 10% less power, He also managed to increase the speed on the sub light engines by 50% by just simply turning the other systems offline while traveling. It was such a simple fix, and he wondered if the aliens left it in or never used these drones anymore for work. Matthias assumed the aliens had more advanced ships and workers, such a simple fix should have been mandatory in a productive society.

  He kept tinkering with the programming and technology until he started to run out of fuel, he scanned every system he passed and discovered all the known hyper lanes. He went further "south" until he was satisfied. All he would be doing alone is having fun in his corner of the galaxy, He kept tinkering and exploring new ideas, He looked over all the ships designs in his "memory" and kept tinkering with scripts and modeling around removing unimportant parts like living quarters and others. He figured he would never see a human out here and if he did he would design a fast ship that could transfer humans to a space station or a planet colony instead of letting them live inside a warship. Several flaws and fixed them he improved their shields, speed and weaponry. Matthias started to think these aliens weren't as smart as he figured they be, Too many errors, too much sloppiness.He assumed the aliens had superior intellect but after going through all the technology and seeing improvements everywhere. Matthias figured they had a few thousand years head start in technology, but he would catch up if they were this sloppy and that excited him.

  5 Years Later.

  Matthias found what he wanted and his fuel was running on fumes, a system with 60 planeloads, Several of them were mine able and several of them were lava planets that were not mine able. He scanned the system and saw an asteroid belt that would last him ten thousand years with the 1000 drones he carried in his cargo hold. Matthias did full scan of the system and found the three wants, fuel, minerals and adventure. The scanned the nearby hyper lanes and saw that other nearby systems were acceptable too, fewer planets but also a big asteroid belt. He jumped back to his starting planet and named it "Last Stand". He was bit of a romantic in that name he felt, but he decided he would hold this piece of the galaxy against the "Futility", It was his final stand.

  The drones were unleashed and went straight toward the minerals in the asteroid field. Matthias was happy about the speed improvement and drill improvement, He figured he would catch up to the other warriors that settled before him in 3 years. He micromanaged his drones and started to produce more drones, he would keep this pattern going on endlessly, the more drones the more resources, rinse and repeat.

  Matthias kept building his drone production on the ship got maxed out, and he sent drones to build a drone factory, he kept micromanaging back and forth keeping 100% productivity levels, he was not missing a beat, and he seamlessly controlled the now 50.000 drones swarming around the asteroid belt grabbing ore and depositing it. He figured out a way to incorporate more "Garbage" minerals into his drones to construct them faster, their hull strength was reduced by 20% but that did not matter with the energy shield taking the brunt of the hits, he figured he could probably go with paper thin hulls with a strong enough shield generator. His fuel reserves would run out pretty fast if he cranked his shields to 100% constantly, so he calculated 20% was his max profit range.

  It took him less than a second to calculate the completion of the first drone factory that would be completed in 12 days, He already improved the factory by removing useless rooms and clutter and installed a big power generator instead, he increased the drone building speed by 400%, and he kept improving the refinery to keep up, he was bit stuck on that improvement, so he had to build two more refineries instead to supply enough metal for his drone construction. He was on a roll and decided to continue building
and building until the system was fully saturated, and they kept bumping into each other or stalling behind each other. Matthias processed and got the answer to that question 12 years in the future, and so he kept building and gathering and waiting for the day he had to expand outwards.

  10 Years Later

  A completely unique and "Human" made ship landed on the planet and started to anchor itself, the gravity was twice as much compared to Earth but it was no problem for a machine, it unloaded a hot drill that started to heat up the surface until it turned to magma, then started to suck it up a special pipe cooling it and crushing it into blocks, and then would eject the blocks onto a belt.

  A second ship landed next to it and connected conveyor belts and perfect cubes started to roll into the other ship that started to smelt, refine and sort all minerals and stone. It would then deposit it into it's various giant store containers and after it became full would be swapped with a new one in a hasty manner. That was Matthias solution to planetary mining, drill everything and when the planet became too unstable, plug it up with waste rock and start mining on another spot until the planet was just waste rock. It increased his mining yield several times over his Warrior competition which he got sparse news on considering the distance of his time lag to connect to the Gathering, this design was not in the database unlike what few planetary mining designs was in the database was extremely outdated and unpredictable. Almost as bad as earths mining on Luna colony.

  Matthias now knew that the aliens were space faring only they never touched planets, they mined the vast asteroid fields and if they were unlucky with yields they would mine planets extremely inefficient but workable. They had billions of those tiny worthless planetary mining drones it might just match two of his creation. He focused his energy on being most efficient and time saving, he liked that, he took that as a challenge. He wanted to see the faces of the aliens when he surpassed them, when they arrived in the galaxy he would show some pride for Humanity. His mind was processing for a second and took control, the first Battleship just undocked and it was time for a test ride.

  Chapter 2

  8 Years Later

  Matthias looked at the last of the Shells to undock from his shipyard, He made 50 ships to repay the aliens and to make more warriors, he ordered 50.000 drones to dock with the ships and then set them on a course toward Sol, He could not control the drones from that distance, but they were programmed, so they would avoid any conflict or nearby ships and then broadcast a message they were going to Sol and be assigned to new "Warriors".

  Matthias sent them on the way and painted them black and gold instead of the metallic paint from the aliens design, he figured he needed to show some pride it was made by "Humans". He calculated if nothing bad happened they would arrive at earth in 5 years, about half the time he took to travel down here. He knew the warriors that choose his ships would probably enjoy it more than the "basic" model.

  Matthias began his plan to expand now that he finally had mining ships on every planet except the lava ones, He could mine them reluctantly but the fuel cost was astronomical and was not worth his time, The shield technology need to be improved against that kind of constant heat. Matthias had his fingers in all aspect of his "empire" he kept solving the unsolvable and meeting new challenges constantly, He had made 10.000 battleships and now decided to move half his drones and an extra shell to a nearby system, He would figure there would be a time-delay between orders, but he was confident in his drone scripts the time schedule for the expansion of the other system will be kept. The battleships jumped into the system and spread out around the asteroid belt and planetoids. Four million drones jumped into the system and began rushing toward the asteroid to mine it out completely, factories had to be built and planets had to be mined.

  5 Years, 3 Months Later

  "A few months ago 50 black-painted Shells arrived in Sol from a unknown part of the galaxy, The Sol Federation had no comment which "Warrior" sent the ships since their memory banks deleted themselves and prepared transfer for a new "Warrior". The list has still peopled that wish to transfer and these 50 ships will come a long way to help those people become new warriors, but the preparation crew halted these 50 warriors to transfer into the ships. Claiming there was leftover data that needed to be scrubbed clean so no new "warrior" would be mental damaged or lost in transfer" said a news crew.

  Max threw his remote control at the television "Who the hell, leaked to the media!? How are we supposed to work slowly with these vultures over our head!? Huh!" he screamed at his technicians. "Sir, There was an unknown informant from the council that leaked the information" said the head technician.

  Max was angry at his incompetent more than the crew, He knew the warrior that improved those ship probably pushed Humanity forward 60 years in sub light technology by itself, not to mention the hull, shield and power improvements. What kind of genius could solve these things and just casual share it?

  "Sir, It's the President" Maxwell took the phone from the technicians hand "Sir!" "You have been sloppy and the Federation feel you are not up to the task, Luna Colony thinks there is more technology that you are hiding from the Federation, They want a third party to copy the technology and share it evenly between Humanity." said the President.

  Max tried to say something when the President spoke before him "The alien will arrive in 15 minutes and will share the technology on the Gathering, our "warriors" will then transfer it to us and to rest of Humanity, you failed, pack up and head back to R&D." said the President and the call disconnected.

  Max shook his head "Pack up boys, This is the Aliens show now, tell the base crew to pack I will handle the Alien situation" He saluted and walked out the door, he would wait at the hangar until the alien docked.

  He saw a small ship dock with a basic metallic paint and the alien stepped out an of door and walked toward the Shells, Max followed behind and the alien flipped a cord out his finger and plugged into the universal socket.A few minutes of processing, and he said "I HAVE SEEN MANY RACES AND MANY WARRIORS IN THE THOUSANDS OF YEARS I HAVE SERVED, BUT AT THIS MOMENT I KNOW ONLY FEAR FOR MY PEOPLE, FOR I KNOW HUMANITY IS UNPREDICTABLE AND CHAOTIC. THIS WARRIOR IS DANGEROUS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION FOR HE EMBODIES THE MOST FEARSOME TRAIT OF THE GALAXY, INGENUITY.HE WILL BREAK THE MOLDS AND BRING DEATH TO THIS GALAXY, I HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE." he walked out the door and Max was shocked beyond belief, he pulled out his phone and would inform the council immediately.

  The alien docked with his main ship and sent a signal beam toward the edge of the galaxy

  "BEWARE! THEY WILL BREAK THE PACT" He would let out a sigh if he still had lungs, he feared for his people when they arrived to this area of the galaxy.

  "Max, is it? So you are saying word for word what the alien said?" said the Luna representative. "Yes, sir. Word for word. I would say he looked normal and his tone was the same, but it's a machine so." replied Max.

  "This is a good thing for Humanity that we have warriors that can put the fear into the aliens, so they know our worth, I seen the battle reports and videos from the countless skirmishes with the "Futility" and i think at this moment giving up our galaxy is a safe bet, but if we can advance beyond the Aliens. We might just stand a chance to hold our territory forever, although probably smaller and no prospects of expanding if they truly are infinite." Said the Luna Representative.

  Murmurs broke out in the room and people kept talking over each other. "Order! Order! You are forgetting the most important part, this warrior does not share! We know the ships were built around 5 years ago from the logs, This "Warrior" never even contacted anyone about his technological advances. He won't share and one "warrior" won't change this war, But this new technology will improve our warriors, and we should now focus on expanding humanity numbers, we should expand the galaxy and create warriors and humans that can solve this problem!" said the chairman. People stood from their seats and cheered.

  "We can now reach further! We can improve our trade and logistic
s!. We should go further beyond Sol, We should reach each and every corner of the galaxy if we can't find the solution to the "Futility" Maybe our grandchildren will!" said a representative. Thunderous applauds sounded out. The Earth President frowned and left the hall in anger.

  Year 2240

  10.000 battleships patrolled the system uneventfully while watching the drones work, This was Matthias fifth new system. His micromanaging had crawled to a halt with him feeling his processing power was not up to par, Matthias just cleaned up the scripts and the drones and battleships operated independently. He figured the battleships were just decorations more than actually warships since he had guessed that nobody would expand this far without snagging up the territory close to Sol first, and that was probably a nightmare in red-tape and bureaucracy.

  He had not seen anyone in a really long time, and he was fine with that, at the hospital the only face he saw semi regularary was the staff that would peak in and say hello every once in a while. Matthias asked them to stop checking in on him, he could not take the look of pity in their eyes anymore, and they would only stop by if he needed a refill or emergency help. Matthias happily controlled the fleet of his battleships while the drone and factories did their thing, He had not had an accident in several months. He lost a few drones that accidentally parked inside the refinery instead of just unloading. No big deal at least he could melt them down instantly and make new ones. A few uneventful months passed when he rechecked his scan, 50 new contacts entered his latest system.