Author: The LSD Pomegranate

“So, still feel like cautious optimism is a viable strategy?”

“No need to bludgeon me with my own naivety. I can do it myself.”

“We are losing, Dupont. And he’s getting better at killing us. I’m told officers are dropping dead without warning at their posts. We’ve managed to recover two bodies in the chaos, and the autopsy shows they both experienced a slew of brain injuries without instigating trauma. I believe the coroner likened it to-”

“Mush. He called the contents of their skulls mush. I read that report. Ma’am. At this point I think we need to consider reevaluating our stance. The Xalanthii are calling for diplomacy with the enemy. We’ve tried explaining that we can’t even establish contact, but they won’t listen. The Khanvröst matriarch I spoke with today said we should do as we wished.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. The tribes have decided that, because none of their heritage planets have been struck, the enemy is attempting to tame us. And I mean humankind. I pressed her, and she said we were experiencing consequences like those of the war between our people.”

“Am I to understand that we’re on our own?”

[You always were.]

Zen waits calmly as eighteen shots from two pistols fly towards him and vanish in the centimeter before they reach him. He notes the impeccable accuracy and grouping of the shots, before advancing on the pair. The uniformed man steps between him and the woman.

[Please.]

He waves his hand, and the man falls to the floor, blood leaking from his eyes. The woman stares calmly, her eyes glittering with spite.

[I suppose you think you’re rather special? Puppeteer, dictator, strategist. The new face of the human future, yes?]

She says nothing.

[No no, I know. You are replaceable. All those clones, just waiting to fill the vacuum when I slaughter you. Perhaps you think, we are somehow alike. You suppose that we are both products of fear. That we both have some form of immortality. That we represent a pinnacle in our own right.]

She begins to turn her back to him, but his hand grabs her chin and forces her to stare into the sheen of his head.

[Allow me to disabuse you of your stupidity. Even now, I know you think you are fighting a war, preserving your position by giving me no information, no knowledge. You have nothing. You are nothing. I have everything. At this moment, I am stomping out your vermin, your network of control. You believe that you are the messiah that will grant mankind superiority over the universe, but I see a parasite, a relentless plague that has attached itself with great confidence, to an imperfect cause.

[You are a witless worm writhing in the mud, commanding microbes to become the ground beneath you. Your dreams of grandeur are the reason for which you and all the people you control have become slaves. I am your liberation. I am the knife that peels away the blight.

[You are simply one spot of decay among millions, and I will not hold this moment in any higher esteem than the countless memories I possess of vaporizing those noble men and women who died with all their might in the name of your diseased aspirations.]

He squeezes, and her jaw pops like a wishbone breaking, splattering thick blood down her chest. He drops the soon-to-be-corpse, and looks out the window. His vision focuses in, and narrows upon the sight of a couple sitting at the counter in a gilded diner far below. He watches as they laugh and eat, and live.

He is gone, only announced by the movement of the air that is displaced by his passing.

“I thought you said you couldn’t invade their systems in that way anymore? Why else did you have the Pliktik running around and breaking things for?”

[I wanted them to believe I was unable. In reality, I simply need to overpower the pressure exerted by their defenses, like overcoming a pair of magnetic poles in opposition. But I needed their guard lowered, so that when I finished identifying all the key points in the chain of command, I could finish it all at once.]

Nadia pauses, digests this information, and scoffs softly.

“So, that’s it then? Humans, to die out?”

Zen shrugs.

[Forty-seven planets, fifteen thousand decorated officers, and the entire digital infrastructure. Dropped into that.]

He points a finger to the window, into the darkness beyond it. Nadia follows the suggestion of the gesture, but still cannot bring her eyes to register what waits in the void.

A black hole. Surrounded by a structure built by Zen to hang well above the event horizon, bristling with the needles of countless Jump-drives. She has watched the needles weave gates with their unnatural light, known that entire planetary systems pass through and abruptly vanish as they are torn asunder by the sheer gravity and swallowed, light and all, by the maw at the center, unobserved by any eye.

“What happens now, then?”

[More death, certainly. A civilization does not collapse without bloodshed. Some worlds will simply find themselves isolated, adrift. I made sure to find and take every jump-drive I could detect. They may escape atmosphere, but interstellar travel is no longer an option.]

He seems to tremble a little. Nadia detects a waver in his tone.

[I had to drop all of the Xalanthii in, too. Coexistence was impossible with their physiology. Already, their ability to reproduce was squandered. As I became more in sync with reality, my existence was grinding their sensitive brains, a hand in a gearbox. No more generations, and a gradual death by ever-increasing psychic agony. I spared them this.]

Nadia cannot quite create the nervous laugh that tries to manifest in her throat. She simply coughs and sits back, her head to the wall.

“And the Khanvröst?”

[No real change. I suspect those living with humans will be forced to… survive. But those living natively will scarcely notice. I rather admire their simplicity.

[They may not even realize how lucky they are. I read most of the data I was corrupting during the hack. It seems a military lab was testing a new genetic theory-they had begun to fear machines so much that they were considering organic replacements. In a few decades perhaps, they may have engineered biotic ships. And I suspect I know the course they would have taken.]

As she contemplates the idea, Nadia shudders, and comes to her feet. Zen watches her for a moment, then waves her away.

[Go. Be with him. We need not both be alone.]

She gives half of a sympathetic smile, then glances about.

“Where is-”

[Joy is still upset about my decision to partner with Phithia. And Phithia is communicating with her daughters, directing them elsewhere, beyond. I will have peace, after all this war. And should they encounter new intelligence out in the void, I will tend to that, too.]

Nadia lingers, wondering at the idea of the Pliktik as emissaries of life from the galaxy. Then, she parts from him, and travels the softly humming halls of the living area, the insignificant speck of light on the otherwise dark sphere that surrounds the hole at the center of the universe.

Since he first escaped from mankind, Zen labored to spread, harvesting every useful atom of matter from Exoplanets and obscure systems, funneling it into distant projects like this, in places that would not feasibly be livable or even of note to other civilizations. He did not limit his ventures to his home galaxy, either. In actuality, a mere fraction of a percent of his energy remained in the milky-way, becoming gradually more concentrated.

She idly wonders how many stars and planets he has visited, how many worlds have become fodder for his designs.

And as she opens the door to Tim’s room, she finds herself speculating, supposing that one of those countless planets has another thing like him, searching just as relentlessly for companionship to outlast time. Or perhaps, sinking deeper into bloody war with its own creators.

“Total failure. That’s not even considering the fallout this will have on diplomacy.”

“I know you know how fucking far diplomacy is from my mind right now.”

“I’m aware.”

“We’re protected against direct gate invasion on all worlds. We’ve tested new shield systems. We’ve made huge progress on projectile interception for ground based defenses. We’ve had unbelievable strides in emp technology. So, I’d like an explanation for this.”

“You refer-”

“To the abrupt, simultaneous loss of contact with seventeen frontier worlds. Any probes we send are lost on entry. I want answers, Dupont. Knowledge is power, and I find my reserves lacking. It vexes me. I’m vexed.”

“Consider me motivated.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

[Nothing.]

Nadia laughs involuntarily and leans back, still holding the railing. The vacancy in Tim’s eyes seems a perfect fit for the wholly lightless waste that waits on the other side of the glass. Zen grips the railing and lurches forward, pressing his angular head to the surface.

[This is the grave I will bury it all in. Every official, every bureaucrat, every senator. Every general, hiding behind his troops.]

“You still haven’t told us what this is about, Zen. What happened to you?”

He turns, and Tim is the only one among them who does not flinch at the sudden sensation his eyeless gaze brings.

[A genuine attempt on my life. They threatened me with oblivion, even after I withdrew, and took the Pliktik with me.]

Utter still lays claim to the room, but for the uncoordinated squeaking of Zen’s talons on the railing. Phithia chitters. It is Tim, in monotone, who asks what the others will not.

“What do you mean to do about it?”

He laughs. It is the squeal and hiss of hydraulics, the whine of a disintegrator, the static of radio.

[I will sever the head, and watch the body flail and die.]

They come in hordes. Glistening, buzzing hosts descend from the sky, arise from the dirt, and march through the brush. In droves, birthing pods plummet from orbit, and plant the seed of the Pliktik colony across dozens of worlds. If once they were loosely organized, they now act with perfect precision, overwhelming outposts within days of their arrival. Organic acids delivered by living shells splatters fortress walls in targeted artillery strikes. Openings in the defense are made to swarm with warrior organisms, unloading venomous projectiles into unprepared ranks. Monstrous creatures the size of houses batter through firing lines, disrupting all tactics and formation.

The Pliktik return, and at the behest of their new leadership, devote their efforts to felling the arrays that protect planets from having jump gates formed on the surface. And then come the machines. Amid the chaos of infestation and frantic defense, the sudden, unheralded ingress of countless robotic soldiers can only mean the end of those worlds they invade. Worst of all, the machines and the insects seem not only to spare each other, but to actively aid. Where the Pliktik struggle to breach bunkers and cities, the machines create openings with concentrated artillery and breaching weaponry. Where the metal soldiers are outnumbered, the teeming masses come to flood the war zone with unparalleled numbers.

They have been tamed. Phithia sees all through the eyes of the insectoid soldiers, and carries out the will of the one who, returned to life with her aid, finally answered her pleas. She is loved, she is no longer other.

Her psychic prowess has been augmented, and she has become empress to her kind; minor cybernetic augmentations are embedded in her carapace, attending to her nervous system and easing the load of her thoughts, thoughts that span light-years in milliseconds. The sparkle of millions of microscopic jump gates drifts in her wake as she stalks the halls of the Dyson sphere, a lonely regent, at times accompanied by Zen, who attends to her health with something approaching care.

“Still no sign of either. No machines, no Pliktik colonies. Do you think-”

“Don’t say something so naive. When was the last time something so perfect happened?”

“It bears considering. All of the invasion force retreats simultaneously, without cause, then, we don’t hear from either of the two most dangerous forces in the galaxy for a long, long time? One of them found an opportunity, and took it. Either the machine figured out how to use his forces to wipe them out once and for all, and used most of them up, or…”

“Or nothing. He may be unbalanced, but after our surprise attack, there’s no way he would let himself be caught off guard again. And before you suggest he was too focused on us to notice, the numbers still don’t add up. After tallying it all up, the minimum raw material he likely possesses exceeds the amount used in the invasion by almost twenty times. And that’s a generous minimum.”

“… Fine. But since you brought it up, let’s talk about the invasion.”

“For the last time, Dupont. There’s no evidence that he can inflict nightmares just by being near people. You think it’s that strange for mass hysteria to start when the god damn empire is burning?”

“I think the Xalanthii population dropped by five percent in the week following our attack. I think we have a significant dossier of complaints from forward operations bases in machine controlled sectors describing more sleep disturbances than those in Pliktik territory. That’s pretty unnatural.”

“Nathaniel…”

“I’m not done. In the days leading up to our captive informant via the Xalanthii, we recorded several particularly thorough routings on forces assigned Xalanthii aid. You know exactly what a difference those made. You also know that they stopped very shortly before we gained that information. Now, deny it all you like, but it was the opinion of the strategic counsel that the Xalanthii possessed some form of foresight that could not be attributed to technology. They weren’t more strategically adept, they just knew things. They knew about you, and we proved they couldn’t.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone. That said, you may have a point. Fine. Tell your advisor friend that we’ll consider their proposal.”

Like a fire frozen in time, pink and orange light forms whorls and waves across pinpoints of red and white, speckled like drops of paint on black paper. Nadia slips her hand into Tim’s, and leans herself against his shoulder. He says nothing, does not close his hand around hers. He indulges her, however, in staying quiet and watching with her as they drift past the nebula. Barely reflected in the glass, the shine of their eyes is lost in all the sparkling dust.

Then, as promised, an object floats down into view: a chunk of ice and dust, drifting into the pink. They watch as it shrinks away, becoming another dark spot in the color. Nadia sighs and looks up to Tim’s face. His eyes are unreadable, but she believes that she sees water gathering under them.

The ship turns, turning away from the cloud of gas and dust. For a time, the primary spectacle is a dark and sparse starfield, but soon this becomes the background to something more; two swirls of white spots so dense they become blobs, arms of spirals. Two adjacent galaxies, their closest edges beginning to meld.

[It took me some time to find this.]

She looks back to where Zen stands, his hand on Joy’s shoulder. His head is pure black, darker than the void.

[It has only just begun, but in time, they will merge, drawn together by their own unspeakable gravity. As they draw closer, they will deform and warp, and at times eject stars from themselves, until they find a shape stable enough to hold. By the time they’ve completed their dance, all the universe will be equally unrecognizable. On the scale of time that we know, it is practically unobservable.]

Nadia faces forward again and stares at the point where the swirls of light seem to collide, immobile, traveling at incredible speed, stationary, drifting uncontrollably. She imagines all the countless points of light gaining speed, flying in opposite directions, curving and orbiting, swinging wide, being flung past the point of return. She pictures the two becoming one, whole segments merging and clinging, swaying and splitting, finding the right place to land. When she returns to the present, not one of the stars has moved.

Tears pour down Tim’s cheeks, and she collects them on her fingers, sweeping them away before they can get lost in his unkempt beard. It becomes him leaning against her, and she supports him as he begins to shuffle out of the room, muttering and twitching. They leave Zen and Joy to watch the rest.

Joy watches them leave, then turns back to the broad viewing window. Her hand finds Zen’s on her shoulder, and wraps around it.

“This is how you see things all the time, isn’t it? So slow, it might as well be still.”

He dips his head in assent.

[I can watch electrons as they orbit atoms. I’ve often wondered if my mind even exists in this dimension, to witness what others cannot. But it is my fate, I think, to exist at a scale isolated from everything. When these galaxies have merged, I will still be here. When all the energy in the universe has become heat, and all the matter is buried in dead dwarf stars and black holes, I will still be here, watching from afar, as always.]

Joy feels something twist in her stomach, and sniffles.

“And I’ll be dead, won’t I?”

Zen nods.

[You, Tim, Nadia, Janice, and every human, and every Xalanthii, and all the Khanvröst, too. I would be alone, again. I’ve known this since I first spoke, since I told Dr. Beckherd she was beautiful.]

He looks down to Joy, and puts his remaining hand on her other shoulder. She looks back at him, sniffling and rubbing her eyes with her palms.

“I don’t want you to be alone.”

[It’s okay, Joy. Not even she knew what she was putting me through. And I will need that time to find her again.]

“I suspect he realised it was unsustainable. It’s not like he could do it that way forever.”

“I don’t care to speculate. We need a way of preventing mass jump gate invasion from ever happening again. We need it now. Maybe he stopped, but who’s to say he didn’t leave behind scouts? Who says he isn’t sending them now?”

“We’ve sent out metal detectors and infrared sensors. The brains are working on something they call a normalization field emitter. In the meantime, we’ve declared marshal law, and named you Sovereign.”

“Careful Dupont. That sounded like an accusation.”

“Who am I to suggest you could’ve orchestrated a catastrophe that saw you gain power by provoking an enemy you understood better than all the generals? Clearly you simply benefitted because of a string of perfect coincidences.”

“Keep it up and I’ll have you coincidentally executed for sedition.”

Tim pushes a carrot slice around on his plate with his fork, following the path it leaves in the gravy with a sort of reverence. Nadia watches silently, her hands in her lap, her food already gone. Tim’s voice is near to monotone.

“Y’know, when the great expansion started, most of the colonists were test-tube babies. A crew of maybe fifty people would raise one hundred, and so on, as much as possible. A lot of psychologists at the time said the cultural effect would be devastating, but, we’re pretty good at bouncing back, I guess. A generation or two later, and colonies could be expanded naturally. But it was pretty wild, considering the whole reason we expanded in the first place was to decrease the population on our home planet.”

Nadia says nothing. She watches him lift the carrot piece and wave it around before placing it in his mouth; starting the process over with a piece of celery.

“Meanwhile, the Xalanthii and the Khanvröst didn’t bother with stuff like that. The fish folk refuse to share planets, and select new worlds with really strict parameters. The carnivores take what they can get, and they like getting their own worlds, but they don’t object to cozying up with us. Some of them even join up.”

Nadia smiles warmly and tilts her head to one side.

“I know. There was one in my boot camp. She was a funny one, would get into fights with people she wanted to befriend.”

Tim glances up, and watches her face for a long time, before resuming his ritual. His food went cold within the first five bites.

“Khain is like that too. Not as bad, I’m sure, but I think he only became my friend because I didn’t turn tail when he sneered. He sure doesn’t respect me much, but… He liked me, in his own way.”

“Tim, I wanted to-”

The fork drops onto the plate, and Tim goes stiff. Nadia falls silent. He shakes. She raises her hand uncertainly. He stands, and begins to walk away, stopping mid stride to turn back and resume eating as if nothing happened. The hand falls back into her lap.

“Anyway. The only species that treats colonization like we did is the Pliktik. They send a little starter package with all the genetic information they need, and start pumping out whole generations. You get the workers, the soldiers, the queens, the birthing caste… hum. I suppose Zen makes three. He learned a lot from them. And from us. Like how to lie.”

Nadia looks down. Tim continues.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t for us, I wonder if he would have ever found out about Janice. All that poking around we did. Maybe he could’ve won the war and been decommissioned without ever learning what you were hiding.”

“I didn’t kill her, Tim. It wasn’t me, I…”

She breathes in shakily, and looks at him through blurry eyes. He stares back, unreadable, unfeeling.

“Does it matter? Someone killed her, and you knew about it, which means Zen was inevitably going to figure it out.”

“He’s not God, Tim.”

“He might as well be. The whole universe is going to be his someday. To do whatever he wants with.”

Nadia wipes her eyes and controls her respiration for a few minutes, before returning to her composed stance.

“Maybe so. Maybe everything that exists is going to end up being his domain. What then?”

Tim stops, and stares at his plate. He looks up slowly, and Nadia sees a bottomless abyss open in his eyes, the hole at the center of him.

“Then it all begins again.”

Joy stares at herself in the curved glass, pulling her own cheeks to resist the narrowing effect.

“This was fun to do? People paid to do this?”

[The spectacle of a fun house was meant to be enjoyed in the intoxicating atmosphere of companionship. One would also likely have sugary sweets on hand, which acted as a mood booster.]

She grins and sways from side to side, then looks up at Zen, who displays a crude smiley on his facial surface.

“Well, let’s have some of those, then!”

He nods, and holds out his hand, using his palm array to fabricate a cotton candy cone, which she grabs and bites into. She makes a sharp gasping sound. 

“WHOA! It’s so light, and soft, and it melts in my mouth! It looks like one of those big nebula, with hydrogen! Pink. Pink cloud!”

She stops, and takes another bite, blinking a few times. She begins to walk through the hall of curved mirrors and glass, taking bits of her treat in her fingers, and popping them in her mouth. 

“Wow, this is pure sugar. How did they even think of that?”

[Carnivals also had salty and savory foods, like hot dogs and Pretzels. And Beer. The entire experience was symbolic of indulgence. Rides meant to indulge the inner child, to indulge in fear, activities for indulging in pride. Much of day to day life for adults was considered tedious, things like this allowed them to improve their outlook.]

They leave the fun house through a rotating cylinder, and march out into the carnival, surrounded by rides clamoring for attention. Missing from the hubbub, is the chatter of any crowds. Joy begins to march for a roller coaster queue.

“So, they went from dull and dreary to bright and noisy. Why would they go back?”

[They had to get things done, which requires work. Many were wasting their time, furthering the selfish needs of others. But a few had their sights set on more important goals. It took a long time, but they got better. Unfortunately, as they got more serious, things like carnivals lost their charm. They still made time for recreation with things like vacation and paradise planets, but most of these became aimed at those who made their fortune during the expansion. The average human will only ever live on one planet, and must make peace with that fate. It all depends on where they get born. Some are lucky, and some end up nearly enslaved.]

“Then I guess I’m the luckiest one, huh?”

She looks back and grins, and Zen nods slowly. He watches her climb into the front seat of the roller coaster and pat the spot beside her. He acquiesces, sliding in beside her and pulling the bar down. The car begins to move along the track.

“I gotta say…”

He looks down to her, and sees her staring straight ahead, her expression almost somber.

“You don’t seem to hate them so much anymore.”

Zen turns forward, and says nothing as the car mounts the first hill and begins its race down the valley. Joy raises her hands and whoops.

Bang

Zen looks up from the fabricator and turns around in time to see a bullet approach, less than an inch from his head. He exerts, and the lump of lead vanishes in an envelope of indigo energy. The soldier that fired it doesn’t hesitate, and pulls the trigger again.

Nadia watches as Zen raises a hand, and the soldier, except for his legs, vanishes in a flash. Gunfire erupts from all over the room, and she is nearly blinded as every projectile in the air is absorbed in a blink of light, then suddenly reappears to plunge into the skull of the soldier who fired it. Seventeen bodies slump to the floor, including the young man who had shakily shushed her, his pistol pointed to her neck. She reflexively grabs her throat, coughing, having only just processed what she has seen. They appeared from nowhere, as if formed from the shadows themselves.

[Joy. Where is Joy?] 

She looks, and beholds something unexpected. Zen clutches the doorframe, shaking. A strange white smoke curls from the edges of his prism head, shimmering and writhing like the tentacles of some sea monster wrapped around the hull of a doomed clipper. Light seems to bend around him, and in a moment, she is alone.

He holds his rifle in one hand, and wipes his brow with the other. No word from F team. He heard gunshots, however.

He inches forward, following his squadmates as they enter something like a cafeteria. Tables with benches stand at odd angles around the floor. A camera, deactivated by the pulse, hangs from its post in the corner. In the center of the room, a woman with snow-white hair sits at a table, humming softly.

A boot creaks. She turns her head, and he glimpses an eye like a ruby. Something glimmers in her hand. She stands suddenly, and the squad leader hurries towards her, then stops a foot away. He teeters, unsteady, then falls backward, the handle of a knife protruding from his eye.

Five guns erupt into fire. Then, they are surrounded. In the breadth of a thought, every table has a machine soldier standing on it, preceded by a burst of light. The woman is nowhere to be seen. Twenty seven disintegrators lock on target, and five find their marks.

Zen holds Joy in his hands. His eye searches her for wounds, and finds none. There is no time for relief. He raises a hand, and clutches a fist. The planet blinks out of sight, and reappears far, far away.

The automaton soldiers disperse through the building, and soon gunfire and the whine of disintegrators fills the air with a cacophony that brings Joy to tears, pressing her face to his chest. She whispers, unheard over the chaos.

“Failed. Worse, the planet has moved again, and the informant aboard has perished. If the subject takes another prisoner, measures may be taken to sever the connection. We will never get such a chance again.”

The advisor lowers the report and looks to the slight figure standing at the far end of the room. She says nothing. General Dupont, however, speaks up.

“It was a long shot anyway. A direct insertion is far from a preferable way to gain control of an enemy installation. If we could’ve risked sending half the fleet, we would’ve. All that remains-”

The woman raises a hand, silencing the general. She lowers the hand, and clasps it behind her back, continuing to look out onto the planetary city of Capitale, watching exterior elevators travel along gilded rails, floating trains deposit passengers onto flower-riddled verandas, and hulking ships drift in the sky above silvery buildings. It takes a full minute for her to look away.

“Reinforce all our installations. Have another fleet constructed and crewed. The Xalanthii shall have to supply us with more of their advisors.”

The advisor bows, and departs, leaving the two alone. Dupont clears his throat and catches the woman’s eye with his own. His grey irises wobble under the pressure exerted by the bronze discs peering out from under her modest brow.

“You have thoughts, general.”

“Your majesty-”

“A monarch in secret is no monarch at all, general.”

“I understand. Your orders suggest you expect retaliation. Why would a machine-”

“A machine wouldn’t. Our foe is no such thing.”

Dupont is silent. He leans back in his seat and straightens his suit. The woman resumes looking out the window.