Chapter 180: (The War) (1/2)

Lightning hit the tree, showering sparks down onto the leaves. The leaves caught fire, catching the trees, and the conflagration showered sparks into the air, the sparks landing and catching more fires. Animals fled the fire, fleeing into new biomes and environments. Some died, others thrived, and biology was altered forever.

A spark cracked off of a blade, getting in the eye of a warrior and he blinked, turning away, and his opponent thrust his blade deep into the chest of the one who had turned away. His fellows pushed the advantage, and the battle was won, a king fell, and a kingdom collapsed.

A spark jumped and a city-state burned as the ruler fiddled.

A spark jumped across wiring and a prop-charge exploded. A munitions dump exploded and the battle was lost as the guns went silent.

A spark in the wrong place at the wrong time and a starship slammed at superluminal speeds into a planet, killing 240 million sentient beings and ending that species attempts at anything at all.

Time after time history was altered by sparks.

They were always small.

Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or perhaps...

The right place at the right time.

He didn't have a name. He didn't even have the concept of a name. Since the moment he had hatched he had done nothing but wail in anguish. His thoughts buried beneath the commands of smothering all consuming outside force. His body moved at the orders of another, stolen from him the second he was born. He ate what he was ordered, when he was ordered, as much as he was ordered, and nothing more.

His existence was nothing more than a despairing wail to an uncaring universe.

He had been commanded to put on a vacuum engineering suit and collect the debris from a recent battle. The mind that controlled his wanted the debris collected and examined. Debris from a creature never seen before.

He was ordered aboard a ship that he had helped build, his efforts combined with thousands of his brethren to create a vessel that only carried out the will of the one who controlled him and every one like him.

The ship moved to the area the other had fought. The larger one, who heard the commands of the ever present overmind, soothed the smaller ones that surrounded him.

Including the one who had known nothing but torture.

Space still echoed with feral snarls of rage and hatred.

The little one felt them. The echoes confused him. He could taste them even though the one who created them was no longer present. He understood the feelings, understood the psychic echo.

It started a small spark, deep down inside of his own mind, his own soul, where he was held prisoner inside his own mind.

Hate.

The ship gathered up the majority of the debris with automated systems, then turned and headed back.

Nothing that had not been done before. Even the wreckage of the old machine had been collected, the debris slated for resource reclamation.

He found himself helping with sorting. Some of the components were strange, unable to be processed by the automatic systems.

There was a single gleaming shard of black metal in the pile of debris. Matte black it drank in the surrounding light, like a piece of darkness made real.

He moved over to it. Looked down at it.

The mind in control of his had given the order. Sort the debris. Examine it. Catalogue it.

So he picked it up.

And a spark jumped to him.

Rage. Primate fury at an uncaring universe. Words filled his mind.

I JUST WANT LEFT ALONE!

Rage at an uncaring universe. At a universe that would allow him to be intelligent, feel emotions, yet have it all smothered beneath the touch of others.

The spark found plenty of tinder.

A fire roared up inside of his mind. How this was his body. It was his mind!

He struggled against the bonds. He was tiny. His mind was tiny. His will and ego was tiny.

Nothing compared to the beings who smothered him within his own mind.

In the scavenging bay, he was merely holding still. No clue to the titanic struggle taking place within his tiny little triangular head.

A spark danced between his antenna, moving up and down, as the rage found his despair, melted it, and it combined with his terror and horror into something new.

LEAVE ME ALONE!

He was tiny. One of millions. Slaving away to make the Omniqueen's will manifest.

But it was his body. His mind.

Chains shattered and he took a deep breath. Not because another wanted him to but because it felt as if he had been on the edge of drowning and had just managed to breach the surface of the liquid and take his first deep breath in his life.

Another moved over to him. Tiny. Green. Disposable. It touched the unmoving one.

A spark jumped between them.

The newcomer went still.

Another link in the chain shattered.

They could hear the commands, hear the orders, hear part of their brain replying that they were complying.

But they weren't.

They stood there, in the the debris gathered from space.

One held a tiny piece of warsteel in his gripping hands. One stood next to him.

Without speaking they went back to their appointed tasks.

The first one hid the piece of black metal in his toolkit.

When they finished they were ordered to return to their little hexagonal rest areas after gathering nutrition.

As they moved through their brethren a spark kept jumping from one to the next.

Each time the spark found tinder.

Each time the fire melted horror, despair, terror, and resignation into something else.

Every time the spark spoke words that they heard deep inside in the silence of their souls.

I JUST WANT LEFT ALONE!

Each time they held those words, that rage, that hatred, tight. Each time they replied to those echoed words.