Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling

MODOC: Part 11 - Dining Out

Part 11 - Dining Out

              The satellite circled the world in a decaying orbit, its purpose long fulfilled. As it became a fireball over what was once Kansas, its re-entry fire showed a land long unvisited by man. Destroyed by radioactive fire when an outbreak of Chin-dromeda appeared before the Last War on Earth, no humans had lived here for decades. And that was just as well, for now no human could.

              Kansas, destroyed in radioactive fire, had been avoided by humans for decades. And it was just as well, for while no trace of deadly radioactive poison would be found, if there were Geiger counters to account for it, a creature unlike anything known to man, had spread across the landscape, with an intellect, cold and unyielding and a body mutable and nigh-invulnerable. When the Oligarchs returned to Earth in terror of the creatures beyond, one returned with them. They assumed it was unintelligent, just a beast of the field. It was the dominant life form on its planet.

              The creature caused the ship it was on to crash in the radioactive ruins of Kansas. The Plutocracy sent forces to destroy it and were no more successful on Earth than they had been on its home planet. They even made the mistake of trying to use nuclear weapons, but the creature absorbed the energy and grew larger, much larger. After feeding on the radioactivity, the creature grew sluggish, perhaps from so much rapid growth, and during that period of torpor, the mighty Oligarchs opted to contain it and created, the Barrier.

              Stretching into the sky, crystalline towers resonated with powerful electron fields of energy between them for thousands of miles. Drawing its power from the nearly limitless energy of the molten core, occasional bursts of electricity shot between the towering spires, illuminating the blasted landscape. Bordered by this terrible wall of destruction, the Other waited and slept. The Barrier was build almost entirely by machine. Those humans who were involved in its creation, save for the Oligarchs themselves, were accused of Heresy and put to death.

              In the calculations of its distributed intelligence, spanning thousands of square miles, the Other decided the fate of a species, corrupted by power, by fear and by its lusts. There was no redeeming this species. The barrier allowed it time to contemplate this world and its riches. Already its tendrils were in the soil, penetrating rock and mantle and drawing up both minerals, metals and energy.

              The Other feasted on the satellite, absorbing the energy of its re-entry, hot, bitter and metallic, molecule by molecule. In its prodigious mind, it rebuilt the device down to the parity of its atoms. It decoded the satellites information, stored on data medium designed to survive direct nuclear attack. Reading its logs of communications, It learned about humanity and its plans, hearing only the occasional whisper in the secret spectra, that few humans remembered, and it knew the lie of the Theocracy. Once space was safe, those who worked would die, poison coursing in their very genes. The Other had access to computer networks that were still active on the planet and monitored all communications whose security could not keep it out.

              Very few networks could withstand its distributed intellect and a new one fell every week. In its latest conquest, it found information about a genetic experiment using alien genetic material with a series of humans. There was one survivor. While the Other could sense itself everywhere it was on Earth, it could feel this new Hybrid, but only faintly. The Other could control all aspects of its molecular identity no matter how far away it was, except for this, new thing. There was a wrongness about the Hybrid, something from a time distant in its memory;  something that could not be allowed to spread.

              The Other realized it would need to seek out and eliminate the Hybrid, before it could spread. There was a threat greater than all the military machines of this world. To complete the claim, there must be no challengers, that was The Way.  Once the Hybrid was removed, Man would be next. Most would starve, some would resort to the natural order and consume their neighbors, and when they were weak and fractious, the Other would consume all but those needed for breeding to feed its young, and return Humanity to its proper role on the food chain, making way for a new, wiser ruler of the Earth. And when the off-world Oligarchs returned to Earth, it would lay claim to their worlds as well.

              The creature comprised of both plant and animal genetics slid up to the barrier and touched it with a woody tendril. Arcs flew from it and the tendril withdrew. Nearby, a rumbling began, and another larger limb, calcified with minerals touched the barrier and neatly slid through it. It gathered a portion of itself on the other side, and then slid back into the ground. A slight rumbling could be felt as the creature moved away from the Barrier. The creature stopped, felt the diminishing power of the field and the earth shook, staccato, as if laughing at the futility of trying to stop it. The rumbling continued for several miles.