Chapter 235: (The War) (1/2)
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Look at it. I mean, just look at it.
>RSC has shared OrionSpur.hol
It looks like Tannhäuser Gate and the Orion Shoulder all over again.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Everyone's in the wrong positions.
The Fantasy LARPers, masters of nanite enhanced warfare who have honest to Digital Omnimessiah elven queens holding court, are fighting the Lanaktallan. We've got a Darth in Lanaktallan space. The Imperium of Wrath were fighting the Dwellerspawn and are now slamming the Precursor forces in the Long Dark. We've got Old Metal fighting someone new at the Base Systems. We've got New Metal and Mixed Metal all over the place.
It's a complete mess.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
It's only the Terran gift for warfare that's kept this from falling apart. Now they're red-dotted.
If the Terrans pull back till the red-dotting is fixed, the whole thing will collapse.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
You know that's not going to happen.
Since the knowledge of the SUDS red-dotting got out, Terran volunteering has gone up by 19.34%, with over 30% of the volunteers requesting combat arms positions.
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TNVARU GESTALT
I don't understand that. They don't have to die, they haven't had to die in thousands of years, why are they volunteering to die en-masse in a war they don't even have to fight? You guys can fight it.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Because they don't have to.
That's why they do it.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
It's more than that. You have to understand their history. You have to look at through their eyes to understand it.
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AKLTAK GESTALT
So how can it be fixed? The Terran forces are all over the place.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
They're going to have to dig in and rotate the units out, but that'll put two-thirds of the military forces in transit and if anything else happens then it all goes to hell.
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TNVARU GESTALT
Like the SUDS red-dotting?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Touche.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Do we have any idea where the corruption is coming from?
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONENSUS
No. We just know it's coming from the Spur Base, but the problem is, the signal goes through the Long Dark and we're not sure what's in there that has Daxin and the Imperium Forces all excited out there.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Could it be that Queen signal we felt? Could that be corrupting it?
Man, this is like that nightmare that the seer channels keep having.
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TERRASOLMILINT
What nightmares?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
It's weird.
You'll think I'm just being my worry-wart self.
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CONFEDMILINT
If it's on the seer channel, let's hear it.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
All right, fine.
The chat room is empty except for Treana'ad, Rigel, and me.
Rigel is singing, a low sad song, and we can hear the peeping of her ducks and goslings.
Rigel says goodbye and we see come up.
Treana'ad says he'll find us as soon as he can find a new FTL travel method.
I tell him I love him and will miss him.
Treana'ad vanishes and comes up.
I walk around our chat room, fussily arranging things and dusting them off, then walk to the door.
I stare at it for a long moment, then turn off the lights.
comes up.
The seers all wake up screaming.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Chromium Saint Peter, sis, how long have you been having that dream?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
About a week.
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TERRASOLMILINT
About when the corruption started.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Yeah. That's why I got all weirded out when we found out about it.
If it wasn't for our younger members, I'd say we should have never explored coreward. We should have moved to the Cygnus Arm.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Well, I'm glad you did.
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AKLTAK GESTALT
Same here
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TNVARU RULE 34
Same here.
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TNVARU GESTALT
Wait, did my name change?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
That'll happen. Don't sweat it.
We've managed to overcome some of the corruption, we've got our hashes back again and can run off Born Whole clones.
But...
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TERRASOLMILINT
But what?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
Anything hooked up to a SUDS is suffering hash corruption.
Even our Born Whole salted rainbow tables are going bad.
Which means we can't update the standard hashes.
The Born Whole system though, it's working fine.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Which means that it's the SUDS system itself. The Born Whole system uses an entirely different dedicated channel built after the Great Glassing.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Can you switch the SUDS system to the Born Whole system?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
Um, that's an embarassing subject.
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AKLTAK GESTALT
How?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
We might have planet-cracked the guy who developed the Born Whole system and was probably the last guy who knew how the SUDS system worked.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Digital Omnimessiah curse Legion. Eons dead and he still puts his thumb in our eyes.
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
He's alive, remember. We just don't know what he's doing.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Fine. Eight thousand years after the war and he's still laughing at us.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Hey, has anyone heard from Bubble Bass lately?
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...
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DIGITIAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
See? He doesn't even take the bait any more.
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>TERRASOLMILINT HAS LEFT THE CHAT
MANTID FREE WORLDS
OK. That's weird.
This is getting weird.
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
Hey, has anyone else noticed something weird?
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