Chapter 310: (Evil Never Dies) (1/2)
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Are all of you all right?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
We're all right. They obvious were working off of bad intelligence and tactics.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
They didn't stand a chance.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE
They did some damage, but it was mostly because of the sheer amount they threw at us.
Putting Omnicron back to sleep is proving more difficult.
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TERRASOL
We've got some fighting still going on. Mostly against the brain damaged ones who don't know when to quit but are smart enough to go guerrilla.
Found some poor bastards in the EmpShade Preserve.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Oh, those poor Lanaktallan. Did they live?
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TERRASOL
A handful. They're in bad shape, but we managed to rescue them.
The EPOW camps are full though.
Funnily enough, the ones who don't wander around in circles shouting slogans aren't too keen on going home. A lot of them have suffered severe brain injuries.
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AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT
It's been three months out here, almost four. How are
>All right, test that section.
>Green lights. Looks good.
all of you doing.
What is that?
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE
I've checked the lines. That's coming across the maintenance channels, but those have been damaged badly for centuries.
I'm starting to think
>Are you all right?
>Yeah. I think so. That puffies and their mother was rough.
>I know. We can do this because we must do this.
>It's just difficult some times. So many of them. All so afraid. I love you.
>I love you too. Just hold on. We can do this.
>PLAY IWILLALWAYSLOVEYOU.MID
>We love you too, Wally.
that they might be.
Wait, did he say 'puffies'?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
He did! He said 'puffies!”
PUFFIES!
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
What's a 'puffie'?
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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
They've mentioned them before.
What are they?
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TERRASOL
Pubvians. An extinct species.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
A xeno-species my people xenocided during the Terra/Mantid War.
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
If they're in the system, how are they finding Pubvians?
>Oh man, oh man. Ugh.
>What? Is the system destroyed? It'll be hard to fab equipment for that area, it's clean.
>No. Clean means no microbes. There's a pair of corpses stuck in the wiring and they're still gooey.
>Ew.
Wait, were Pubvians ever SUDSed up?
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Not as far as I know.
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TERRASOL
Records are spotty at best.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
They've encountered them before.
What's going on?
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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
You don't think? No. No way. Everyone's been trying to figure it out for eight thousand years.
You don't
>OK, the system wasn't actually damaged. Looks like the wiring got pulled loose.
>Well, that's some good news.
>Yeah, it's straight green down the board.
>Well, I've got bad news.
>What?
think they actually got into the hardware of the SolNet/SoulNet system, do you?
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE
I don't see how. We've had people working on it for eight thousand years.
Nobody's even gotten
>Well, the next part is Layer Gamma and then Layer Beta.
>So?
close to even figuring how the whole system works. We know on our side kind of what happens but anything to do with the hardware we
>You can't get there from there.
haven't been able to figure out what to do. That's why there hasn't been any hardware updates.
>So how are we going to...
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TERRASOL
That might not be... entirely true.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE
What did you do?
>Yeah.
>Oh, man.
>There's something in the buffer. Looks like an old signal. It's pretty scrambled so I'll shunt it over to error checking and repair and then send you through.
>It's like going through Hell.
>No, it's like going between Hellspace and Deadspace and scraping the edges of both with your brain.
>Thanks for that, Sam.
What did you do to the system?
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Anyone else completely lost?
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AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT
No, I'm totally lost. I can't figure out
>How long till I get there?
>Ten hours.
>I'm going to recompile, defrag, and relax.
>Any preference?
>That park by the lake. The Treana'ad are doing ballroom dancing. I want to watch.
>All right. Sleep well.
what is going on.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Wait, wherever they are, where we can hear them talking, there's Pubvians, Treana'ad, Nammerain, and Terrans.