Chapter 211: The Library (1/2)

Do'ormo'ot AKA Prisoner 4582143 trotted around the library, looking at the shelves. The sight of so many printed collections made him nauseous. Printed media was dangerous because it endured. While it couldn't be rapidly disseminated like electronic media the ideas contained within the printed media would outlive the creator by a factor of thousands where electronic media was quickly lost in the flood of new additions to the media.

One of the reasons the first thing the Executors did was add a connection to GalNet to any culture they met. From there it was easy to reason that printed media took up space and had no real value since it couldn't be quickly and easily stored. From there it was a simple task to slowly alter the now-electronic work to say what the Executor Council wanted it to say.

In the House of Wrath My Own, caught his eyes. The original Terran language that he saw quickly squirm and twist into Unified Species Council standard. A thick book. He lifted it up and opened it to a random page, his eyes focusing on a single passage.

It eventually became true that no matter what I did I could not slake my wrath, my thirst for violence and vengeance upon a universe that had wronged, not only me, but my entire species. That I was willing to crack planets, nova-spark suns, do whatever it took to feed my wrath, like coal to a furnace, just to feel something again. Every sight of the restored Earth was a wound to my soul, each exactly, painstakingly recreated, perfect restoration of Lost Terra was a wound in my soul, in the souls of all of my fellow man. How, then, were we to proceed when the healed wound still ached with pain? Destroying the marks, the history of what had been done did not actually make it go away, it just made it so you no longer were able to understand why you had a bleeding painful wound deep inside of you. I knew not, not then, what could be done to truly heal the wound and move forward from that terrible act.

Do'ormo'ot closed the book, shaking his head, ignoring the feeling of his stiff tendrils waving back and forth.

Nothing of value. Just an uncivilized brute complaining about losing something that does not serve the greater good, he thought to himself as he put it back onto the shelf.

He moved between the stacks and picked another book at random, not bothering to read the spine, just holding it in his hands and opening it to a random page to look at the words within.

wind was sweet, no longer carrying the taint of industrial pollution and rotting vegetation from dying kelp beds. I watched as my ducklings starts fluffing the sand beneath the shade providing overhang, settling down to rest on the silver sand of the beach. For all my life the ocean sand had been black, oily to the touch, and burned my skin. Now, my ducklings could nest down for a nap on it happily and safely.

Do'ormo'ot snorted, closing the book and putting it back.

Absolute drivel, he thought to himself moving on. He pulled down another one and looked inside.

lost and adrift. Our culture, our society before the Great Awakening, was nothing more than slavish service to the queens. No art, no music, no poetry, just marching in lockstep to her will even as we screamed and screamed and screamed inside our own minds for our entire life. Is it any surprise, dear reader, that we clove so firmly to Terra's chaotic, insane, and utterly glorious culture? We barely understood the concept of a song and they had millions, billions of songs, that spoke of emotions, deeds, or just plain nonsense. As I write this, dear reader, I wear a Jumpinart Ringstrober t-shirt, as their music spoke to me. I weep for my people, who have a hundred million years of history.

But no culture.

Do'ormo'ot felt his stomach twist at the words. They were almost heretical. What use was songs, and poetry, or even slathering dyes upon a surface in an attempt to recreate something? It was a waste of resources, a waste of time, a waste of labor.

If I could, I would have each author of these blasphemous things disintegrated and erased from all records, he snarled.

He trotted through the stacks, sneering at the books, and then stopped, staring.

The book was made of leather and the hide pattern was unmistakably Lanaktallan.

What is this? Do'ormo'ot wondered. He reached out and took the book down. The words didn't twist, just appeared as ancient and archiac but still understandable.

Tending the Vast Field Where Crops For the Soul Grow was the title.

Frowning, he opened it, looking at the words his eyes lit upon. He was startled to see it was written properly, unlike the Terran books. Rather than one side of the page or the other, it was written properly. From the outsides of both pages, inward to the spine, more comfortable to his eyes.

What, more than hubris, led to our fall? Greed. Plain and simple we became greedy, our civilization little more than an appetite that demanded more and more and More and MORE until we became convinced that the vast and glorious universe was ours and ours alone. That somehow we would survive to the face entropy, as if entropy itself, as if time itself would not lick away our stored and hoarded resources. What arrogance and pride we had in ourselves. That we would survive billions of years, that we had determined a universe to be finite so indeed it must be, when we have touched barely a thousandth of this galactic arm.

We destroyed more resources, losing this war, then our people would have consumed throughout our gathered eternity.

Shame upon the Lanaktallan people. Shame upon us, upon our pride, upon our narcissistic greed.

Do'ormo'ot slammed the book shut and trotted backwards, shaking. The wording, the phrasing, were all Lanaktallan, as familiar to him as his own name, but yet the thoughts within were foul, disturbing, questioning the rightful place in the universe of the Lanaktallan people.

Do'ormo'ot hoped that the author of the text had been taken somewhere and pushed into a biomass reclaimer. The fact that the Lanaktallan, and from the phrasing and word choice it could only be one of the Great Herd, had written such disgusting words made Do'ormo'ot shake in rage.

Putting the book back he spotted another one, the title intriguing him.

Together We Graze

He expected it to be a book on the worthwhileness of submission to the will of the Great Herd.

What he got was love poetry, written by a female, toward her stable of males. Little more than long winded symbolism and appeals to emotion. The entire book was a waste of time and resources. It was obviously written by a wealthy and powerful female matron. The fact she wasted so much emotional pablum on the males she had gathered around herself was sickening.

He slammed the book closed and angrily jammed it into the shelf.

With that he trotted over to another section. Looking at the books most of the titles did not make sense to him. Some of them had no translation for the words in the title or the words were confusing, as if they were just randomly put together, or made a half-statement.

We Fear Darkness was a title. He opened it to a random page and read. It made no sense. It was just a being pontificating about the nature of darkness to a friend in letters.

Drivel and gibberish, Do'ormo'ot thought to himself. Darkness is merely the absence of light, it does not endure and grow within a living being. It has no effect upon a being's decisions or attitudes. Ethics and morals are instilled in the creche, as is proper.

He placed the book back on the shelf and kept moving around.

There was no computer to examine electronic media, to examine video or listen to speeches. It was nothing more than tome after tome of written word. A massive waste of resources and extremely inefficient. Most species abandoned the resource intensive and wasteful practice of using printed media within a few centuries of developing electronic systems capable of storing electronic media.

He took down another book, one that didn't make any sense for the title. He read a few pages and put it back as soon as he realized what it was.

A fictional account of a small group of Terrans exploring a lost planet named 'Disfigured Venus' where they encountered incredible lethal plants and insects and other lower life forms, looking for ruins of a previous civilization.

He closed the book after a moment. He had gotten pulled in, started to become interested, until he reminded himself that it was a fictional account, basically the author lying to him about the deeds of other people taking place in a made-up location.

Do'ormo'ot put the book away. Part of him wondered, as he trotted away, if the story had followed the obvious and had the mythical facility the Terrans were looking for not only exist, but be found by the Terrans. He was sure, that like most fantasies, everything worked out in the character's favor and nothing bad happened and they accomplished all their goals.

Fiction is juvenile and the hallmark of a species that has not matured enough to realize that fiction is little more than power fantasies of the weak and pathetic, Do'ormo'ot thought to himself.

A Terran came around the corner, stopping in front of him.

”Prisoner 4582143, your allotted library recreation time has expired. You will be accompanied to your cell. End of Line,” the Terran stated in the discordant voice.

Do'ormo'ot opened his mouth to refuse, thought about going limp and collapsing on the floor, but then remembered the long interval of pain from his beating. He instantly decided that it wasn't worth it, the pain, the memory of the pain, encouraging him not to resist.

At the door to his cell his was required to turn over his thick cloth covering, his gloves, and his mask. When he trotted into his cell he looked at himself.

The thick black material still covered patches of his flesh. He ran his fingers across it. It felt slick, smooth, almost frictionless. Oddly warm to the touch, unsettling. He tapped it and could feel the impact of his fingertip through the flesh beneath, but the thick black material was almost nerveless.

He worked a finger underneath the thickest section and tried to pry it up. The pain was immense, making him close his eyes and make long high pitched noises of pain. It was attached to his skin, no, more than attached, it had replaced his skin somehow. It felt like it had melted his skin and grafted directly to the subcuteneous layers. The edge he had pried up welled up with thick black blood that oozed slightly out of the wound then hardened into the black material.

Do'ormo'ot hung his head. There was no way to remove the plating. He had not seen an opportunity to escape. He was unsure how to estimate where he was being held prisoner.

He trotted up to the window and looked out. Nothing but endless purple with streaks now and then through the depths that vanished as soon as he tried to look closely. After a few minutes he could feel the purple begin to press in on him, like it was pressing against his open window. He backed up front the window, turned around, and faced the corner.

Gathering his training about him he began to examine the bricks. All of his implants, from his retinal display to his biometrics monitor to his datalink's memory storage, were all disabled. Still, there were ways to examine one's surroundings to determine the exact nature of the prison.

The black stone was neither warm nor cold, a feeling of hard solidity unlike anything that Do'ormo'ot had ever felt before. He pressed his hand against it and looked at the joining. It didn't sink in, but there was a trace gap between his hand and the stone. The stone felt solid, without any texture, but he could see the texture. He tried exhaling and not inhaling, knowing from experience and training he could go up to thirty seconds without inhaling.

He counted to five-hundred before bothering to inhale.

He was starting to get thirsty, starting to get hungry, he could tell he would need to relieve his bladder and bowels sometime soon.

But he also knew he had been feeling that stimulus for a long period of time.

He thought over the drink, the way it had not seemed like water at all, but more like some kind of strange gel that he couldn't swallow and he got no sense of moisture from.

Do'ormo'ot began to suspect, with his seemingly inability to touch the stone's surface itself, that he might in some kind of advanced virtual reality simulation. One that would compress time, use unreal methods to simulate pain and misery.

His anxiety lifted as he realized he was inside some kind of simulation.

Instead of feeling anxiety that he was merely beginning to feel tired, unable to sleep, he merely relaxed. Once the Terrans realized their simulation wasn't going to work they'd undoubtably pull him out and that would give him a chance to actually get free of his captors.

They were primates, little more than lemurs, the chance of being able to hold on to a highly trained agent of the Great Herd was slim to none.

The slot in the upper part of the door snapped open.

”Prisoner 4582143, you are allocated one hour of liesure time in the exercise yard where you may choose to socialize or exercise or merely exist outside your cell. Move back from the door. End of Line,” the Terran voice came. It was impossible to tell one voice from the next, the patchwork voice robbing the speaker of all identity.

He donned the 'robe', mask, and gloves he was given to completely cover his body.

Do'ormo'ot was tempted to refuse. Damage done to the physical body in virtual reality did not carry over to the actual physical world and vice-versa, so he had no real fear of their ”level whatever stimulation”, but he decided to go ahead and play along with the simulation, see what other data he could gather.

A lot could be told about a species from the type of details they put into a simulation.

Again the route was unfamiliar, but Do'omo'ot wasn't worried, that made sense. Each trip would be procedurally generated so that the system wouldn't have to stored at all times.

The 'Exercise Yard' looked the same, only this time Do'omo'ot watched as more prisoners entered the open area. Guards on the walls and in the towers held primitive weapons and Do'ormo'ot sneered internally at the fact that the Terrans were obviously obsessed with primitive weapons out of a misplaced belief that older times were better times.

Another Terran came up, the engraving on his mask ornate and swirling, sitting down across from where Do'ormo'ot was sitting at the table.

”You didn't go to church services. Do you refuse the light of our lord the Digital Omnimessiah?” the Terran asked.

”Religion is the mark of a primitive mind that seeks to explain facts that its ignorance cannot comprehend,” Do'ormo'ot said.

The figure cocked its head. ”Are you calling me primitive, you six-eyed four legged ambulatory hamburger?”

”If you believe in religion then your primitiveness is nothing more than self-verified fact. Such devotion, given to a figure of fantasy, would be better harnessed for your species in the service to the state and your people,” Do'ormo'ot sneered. ”The belief in magic and an afterlife is little more than a primitive fear of death and the inability to control one's surroundings.”

The figure laughed at that. ”A true non-believer,” he turned to the others. ”His benighted kind has not been visited by the mercy of the Digital Omnimessiah!”

That got laughter, which made Do'ormo'ot bridle up.

The figure stood up, pressing its hands together. It began praying and it took everything Do'ormo'ot had not to start laughing in the other being's face.

Until the being widened its hands out to display purple and blue lightning. Do'ormo'ot started to recoil in fear until he remembered.

”Your displays within this simulation do not frighten me, primitive,” the Lanaktallan sneered.

”PRIMITIVE THIS!” the figure roared, leveling its fist at Do'ormo'ot.