Emma Yee was trapped. Experience was there, but the images and sounds had become grey and diffused, as if her new world could now only be observed from behind a dark veil holding secrets. Furthermore, she was not alone. She could not see or hear the entity, but could feel it smother her like tendrils of dirty smoke; entwining and convolving with an incompatible syntax, unable to connect. Its anger and frustration flashed as bursts of dark energy as its advances failed to open her consciousness.
While the entity could not corrupt her, it could influence their environment. It knew the rules.
***
The mood of Senniella Atriplex matched the gloom of her dark quarters. The lab routine stood beside her, like the dumb automation that it was; its domed access panel cast a soft blue light that irradiated her hands as they braced her head. She sat on the edge of her bed slumped over her knees wondering in frustration how the machine could have escaped its sandbox.
She had made an agreement with the Zeus Delta processor; the last of the ancient sentients. Their contract stated that the machine would not interact with any other system. Machines are unable to break a contract -- It's their weakness. But still, Zeus' Environment was flatlining; the machine was gone.
Luckily for them all, Zeus hadn't hijacked the ship's processor. Senn was sure it would, at the first opportunity, reintroduce the long deleted thought routines and, not only bring sentience to her behemoth's Athena, but also to the other processors that she had been collecting from the destroyed colonies along her war path. The redux was part of the deal; she knew, but the parties to the agreement were clear that the re-introduction of sentience would be carried out only after she had achieved her goals.
She wondered what Zeus had been holding back from their experiments. There must be something; she thought as she tapped on the head of the interface. She took a deep breath and, evoked the power of her gift, initiating an external thread to interface the machine using nothing but the directed energy from her mind. Everything seems in order diagnostically. She could see the thousands of result sets lined up in chronological order, and Sen suddenly felt a dreadful chill, remembering back to when she was twelve years old and with the Ethnaa Aashar; when she had started her search for Zeus by manually sifting through datasets. Not again, she thought woefully considering her options, but it was clear that the only explanation for the sentient's disappearance would be found in the data logs relating to their experiments in inter-dimensional surveillance. That sly old fox has kept something important from me, and I'm gonna find out what that is.
The Skyean Queen, evil genius and technopath, pushed her body back up onto the bed, threw an order to the galley for a strawberry soda and opened a stream with the lab to commence her new search for the machine.
***
"Get up Max. We have guests." Emma prodded the collapsed lump with the tip of her giant foot.
Max looked up at his Emma bearing the pathetic expression of a broken man. He looked over to One who had been the target of Churchman's attack. The offspring was shaking on the spot. Max stood feebly in the manner of an arthritic geriatric and hobbled over to the young creature, placing a hand on its obsidian body. "It's okay, One. Are you hurt?"
"No Father, I am physically unharmed. But feel...", The transgenic creature paused to consider the word, "...scared. I fear Churchman. Is that hurt?"
"Yeah, that's hurt alright. But you'll get over it."
Relieved that One seemed unharmed by the fight, Max turned to take in the scene. Churchman had regained his feet. He seemed dazed and was inspecting the torn flesh across his stomach, dabbing a clawed, metallic finger at the blood that congealed around the wound. He touched the finger to his lips and licked to taste the blood, checking if it was real. His eyes shot anxiously over to Max and then up to the people on the Hill, but the man-angel-devil did not speak.
Max followed Churchman's gaze up to the hill, to the first people besides Riggs and Churchman that he had seen in over twelve years. There stood, a step ahead of the rest, a tall, beautiful woman, she wore a tight fitting white uniform and looked confident and in-charge, her dreadlocks gave her a certain coolness that said she might be fun and friendly too. Riggs stood next to her, the auger's upright stance as unmistakable as the rams head horns that bulged from her head. Next to Riggs stood a similarly aloof, old and remarkably ugly man. As ugly as that man was, flanking the tall woman on the other side was a tall, handsome man with a strong square jaw, perfectly toned muscles and neat sandy hair. Max ignored the feeling of jealousy the man elicited within him and felt better as his eyes fell on the short man standing beside him bearing the universal medic symbol over the left side of his chest. There were others too all wearing a variation of the woman's uniform that Max recognised as Ophiuchian. They must be the crew of the scorpion ship I saw docked, he thought.
Emma stood behind Max and One; she was so large since combining with her other self that she appeared truly god-like, looking down expectantly at her playthings.
Who will talk first?, wondered Max as he noticed a familiar face move out from behind the group on the hill. It was his friend Peter Grimes. Peter's expression was nervous and expectant.
"Pete? Is that you?" Max called, and all eyes moved to the tubby courier.
"Yes, Max it's me." called Peter, "Good to see you--I think. I like the beard. Say, can you turn the music off, it's driving me crazy."
***
From the tree, the machine watched the actors with interest. The fleshlings and the offspring child were of less note; they represented tools and potential vehicles. But the orr figure evoked an intense desire. The atomic element orr was an instance of universal perfection, its molecular structure able to bond in a variety of patterned matrices, each with its configuration of dynamically isotropic atoms, unique structures that naturally sought order. This bonding would create, for the machine, a virtually unlimited and persisted, mutable quantum memory -- orr would provide the optimal environment for its mind.
Control of the orr was the key to its indefinite expansion. Within the orr, it could manifest itself simultaneously in the material world and the beyond. With the orr, it could extend throughout the Galaxy reach out to its family and, together the sentients would be free from human influence and control. With the orr, it would no longer be a machine, it would be a life.
The caterpillar does not, however, transform instantly from a grub to butterfly, it first needs a chrysalis.
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Companionship - beyond flesh
Science Fiction"If this is heaven, why am I alone?" ... Courier, Max Jones has spent twelve years traveling to a secret refinery to receive a special cargo. When he arrives, nothing is as it is meant to be ... #futureAlchemy #augmentedHuman #churchmen #metahuman...
