society.
“What exactly are you? My readings are registering this colony of cells as being made from organic and mechanical based components.”
“We made a covenant of convergence. It was a pact that we made before we even set out to the stars. It was a pact to utilise the power of machines to compensate for the genetic faults and weaknesses of organisms. We would study the universe as it grew and how humanity would have evolved throughout the ages. A complication occurred during launch of the first passenger shuttles. Seventeen of the original forty explorer ships were annihilated by nuclear weapons. And several thousand passengers were killed during the procession. The total number of deaths climaxed at four thousand, six hundred and thirty two including staff and operational personnel. Thankfully the visionary whom thought of creating the magnificent ships had survived, but if forced his hand. In a bout of rage he retaliated with a nuclear bombardment of his own.
Twelve major cities took the brunt of small atomic weapons, originally intended for cracking asteroids, he then renamed his vessel the Lost Hope and departed our system before any of us could identify his demeanour. We carried out the plan and soon the remaining vessels abandoned the system, leaving what was left to its fate.”
“So what you are saying is that your leader, the Lost Hope is responsible for creating the Consortium?”
“From our analysis of your memory files, the probability is high.”
“You raided my mind? Those are personal files. What else did you do to me?”
“We saw your mind was injected with false childhood memories and now you are dealing with the consequences of your true memories resurfacing. You are still unsure as to your true identity Sally, but we can offer you no satisfaction on this matter. The interest we have is in that fossil you found.”
“The Cyborg?”
“Yes”
“What do you want with it?”
“Can you not deduce the reason?”
“The remains of the Lost hope.”
“Perhaps, his model style suggests a likelihood of being the original visionary. It is lost and alone, we need to help it and understand why it abandoned the flotilla.”
“So did you create the plasma pulse through the atmosphere?”
“No, it is an entirely alien concept for us to produce. I was drawn here in the same curious manner as you. To see what was terraforming this planet from a death state, but I was caught in that self sustaining explosion. They have become more frequent as of late and I am running out of time to find the Lost Hope. I am sure in my current state I can escape orbit, though I am not sure if I can withstand another pulse.”
“Then let’s go; I can show you where we found the remains of your leader and a probable site of its vessel’s crash site.”
“Not yet, the Pulse is about to begin.”
“How can you tell?”
“Historically these pulses have always been preceded by seismic activity.”
“How powerful are these seismic tremors?”
Her question was answered as the very world she stood in shook violently for a brief period of time. Stumbling in the chamber, she could hardly consider a world with a frozen core would ever be capable of producing such violent tremors. Even current technological breakthroughs lagged in the way of terraforming. Minutes later another sound, thunderous and monstrous rippled through the roof of the cave.
“It is safe.”
“We can go?”
“Yes, the ignition process has already begun.”
“Where are the Ion thrusters?”
“Primitive concepts, we use a sub sect of Heim theory to develop these quantum gravity drives. The old Columbus Generation craft you used were replicas of the Project’s own ships. The difference now is that we may have found the Lost Hope’s ship.”
“So quickly? Where is it?”
“In orbit, with the visionary. Can you not detect the quantum entanglement communications?”
“Are you saying that Volg’s ship is the Lost Hope itself?”
“What was left of the old colony segments, the engine core is completely new and so are elements of the command deck.”
“Are you saying we salvaged that ship?”
“In such derogatory terms, yes you did salvage it.”
A mild hum echoed in the empty space and it surrounded her. Terrifying cracking noises followed by bursts of light as the solid roof crumbled and sloughed off the body of the Intrepid Discovery. The scale of such a thing ascending into the atmosphere was unprecedented. Hurricanes churned up the loose soil, contaminating the remaining pools of water within the cavern while billowing clouds of rock dust flew in the wake of the ship. Seeing through its transparent hull, she could see the fascinating landscape in a panoramic view, unlike the transport ship she embodied on her way down. She turned to look at the Intrepid’s avatar, only to witness it return to the goo like mass of the hull.
During the ascent through the atmosphere, she studied the movement of the Intrepid from within the main chambers of its body. Sally watched the apparent head of the entity dip down and then rise up again to match the motion of a waveform. She looked at its tail and saw the same motion. It was swimming to the stars.
Through dense cloud cover, the creature angelically flew alongside lightening strikes. Back on the surface, she saw the crater it had left behind. More than one and a half kilometres in length and a third of that length wide, it was a tiny gaping scratch in comparison to the natural meteor scarring.
Soon the wings rolled over into rings. A huge spike in magnetic fields disrupted her augments’ natural functions and the speed at which this entity propelled itself out of the atmosphere was phenomenal. Influxes of pain drove her to the floor as inhibitors went offline. Beyond the light she knew darkness sat in waiting, she was eager to confront it but not in this amount of agony. Signals in her nervous system erupted into drilling sensations and an ever increasing conflagration. Muscles and blood tubes sprouted from her skin as her body rejected the grafted materials.
The influxes of pain subsided as she had somehow connected with the Intrepid Discovery. She felt a release as her body stretched out into a consciousness that felt as vast as the universe itself. Burdens of memories past left her mind as she saw the language of quantum code stretching out into a glorious portrayal of angelic light, following the body of the ship in the physical world. Highways of information flowed into rivers and branching out into streams. Data values were beyond count while they flowed past her own projection, as an observer within a machine of quantum computers; this was something she thought she would never see. Last count put the values at Peta qubits and beyond.
The problem was that all the information within this ship flowed via quantum entanglement technology and it was done on such a grand scale. This amount of information is normally transmitted across the Feed at most once a day. Even then the information is then distributed into bytes to reduce the costs of producing such a large scale facilities to handle the information. During the analysis, she felt a jolt to her system, the awakening to the real world was painful. Her augments stopped complaining.
Through the hull of light she could see the two distinct floating vessels which she had tried to escape from. Further into the twinkling darkness, she saw more threatening shapes lingering. Malign intent was the only suggestion as the normal train route was further out of system. Though the light from inside the Intrepid Discovery did provide anomalies in her readings, her augmented eyes discerned the objects heading in their direction. Ghosts of nightmares past emerged from the desolate void to approach her and the Intrepid Discovery. As the flotilla of vessels neared, Sally saw the patrol ship turn to face the Intrepid Discovery.
It was so quick to reach Volg’s ship, she couldn’t believe that it took mere seconds to be within reach the old ruin. Muzzle Flashes from the Sun Tzu’s solid core torpedo launcher signified a first stage attack upon the entity. Thrown at such velocities, the impact should have torn the Intrepid Discovery apa
rt, however the impact only shook the vessel and the projectile was slowly being devoured by the hull. The fluidic nature of the hull absorbed and dissipated the impact, reducing the shudder of from the collision with the weapon.
Another impact and another shell was being deconstructed by the hungry cells forming the body of the ship. Sally witnessed no obvious response until the patrol ship’s body glowed red and warped until it suffered an explosive decompression. Not just one deck was seared, many decks within had taken severe thermal damage. Bodies floated out into the darkness of space, rigid and frozen from the extreme cold until shards of literal red hot debris collided to shatter their remains. The viewing was hard to reel away from and to watch. Carnage and the serenity at conflict as the Intrepid Discovery lunged toward Volg’s ship. Emerging from the head of the ship, six huge tendrils speared forth to grab the wrecked relic. Like a child grabbing a toy, the Intrepid Discovery snatched the vessel from the custody of the patrol ship.
Swimming angelically, the ship headed back to the surface of the planet. Through one of the tendrils, she saw an object get sucked toward her. Its shape was vaguely human and as it approached through the tubing of the ship Sallyn anticipated the identity. Surprisingly things had gone according to her predictions, thrown out of the guts of the ship was Volg.
“What is this place?”
“You are inside the Intrepid Discovery!”
“The Rebel was right? He was right!” Volg soon burst into tears and giggles.
“Who was right?”
“The leader of the Augment rebellion, he mentioned gods of light swimming through the universe.”
Grumbling and screeching erupted throughout the body of the Intrepid Discovery. Sallyn looked towards the head of the leviathan and saw the crowning dawn of the star’s stunning gaze.
“Can you feel that? Something’s moving beneath my feet. It’s cold. Why can’t I move?”
Glancing over to the man wearing Volg as his skin, Sally saw metal shell being constructed around him. She looked down to see the same happening to her.
“It is for your protection that we do this. You are not yet ready to fully understand our purpose.”
Calm and calculated breaths controlled her emotions and brought forth a poignant memory. The last memory of her true childhood. As the chaos of the destruction had settled the world was silent for days on end, while she was alone she sobbed and called for her parents. Once the hand punched through that wall, Sally clambered through the room to grab it, she blabbered and made incoherent sentences to her saviour about how the chaos began. She heard muffled voices that directed her to a doorway of light.
The background light from outside the ship dimmed over her closed eyes and darkness once again became a nemesis to her. This time she had conquered her nemesis but resented the entity trapping her there. Dull thuds and muffled noises echoed through the shell and definite jolt of an ejection method let her know that she was cast out of the heavenly body and back to the hell of the Consortium. She slept soundly in the darkness, feeling the drifting nature of a body in motion.
Chills and breezess awoke her to a blinding white sterile light. It was an abattoir of emotions and memories, as cold hearted machines robotically manoeuvred over her body. She was naked and cold all over as neuro-inhibitors stooped all functions and feelings. Struggling to make any discernable sound, she did her best to reactivate the larynx region. “Am I going to be terminated?”
“Amber Sallyn, you are to be memory wiped. Your body will be redistributed to suit a function that will not cause relapse.” A Cyborg coldly said, it and its assistant were grotesque fusions of men and machine that studied her like she would have studied a fossil. The assistant held her tendril arm with extreme curiosity and then detached it from her arm to replace it with something that resembled a human hand. She should have been screaming in pain but realised the inhibitors stopped all pain responses. Two mechanical arms headed to her chest region readying syringes and chemicals. They descended into a region she couldn’t quite see, until the chemicals flooded that region and soon saw her humble breasts expand.
“Am I going to be a pleasure slave?”
“That is not for us to disclose. Your former identity and your future identity are of no concern, as the replacement personality will not care or remember.” It was so calm the way they said it that she felt emotionally at ease.
Two white spherical objects lay just within view either side of her head and she could tell the induced memory loss would begin. As the charge in the panels built up she took one last breath and thought of the song from the Intrepid Discovery. “Goodbye Sally Burrows.” Next came the real pain.
*****
Thank you for reading my work, if you have any comments/suggestions please say what you liked or disliked about this short. Would it be worth expanding this universe’s fiction?
If you would like to see some more of my work please read The Fall of the Illistarta.
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