Chapter 478 (1/2)
MANTID FREE WORLDS
How are you, Cyb?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
We are... surviving.
Casualties were extreme across Terran Descent Human members of the consensus.
But, as we welcome any who are more metal than flesh, we still have many members.
Whole worlds, though, are empty.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Are you all just going to ignore the religious epiphanies all of you had?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
No. That was startling, to say the least.
These are strange dark days indeed.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
My people are angry. We just met humanity, fought, and then began to become friends with them.
Now they are almost gone.
Yet their remainder, and their allies, fight to liberate and protect my people.
But we are angry, like something was taken from us before we really knew what it was.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
We get it.
>sighs
We have no idea what's going on with the Sol System, almost all of the TDH worlds are empty, TDH space is just... empty.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Wait, I thought that the kids, because of the neural plasticity in their cyberware, weren't being affected as much by this.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
We've checked. The planets are empty.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
Wait, what happened to the kids?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
Where did they go?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
We're not sure. There were two million TDH children under the age of sixteen on Rigel alone, two days ago, they just vanished. Most of the apartments are locked from the inside, some of them vanished from inside taxis or high security creches.
Just... gone.
Even their clothing was left behind.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
This just gets weirder and weirder.
Some kind of Terran black box project?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
It changes nothing. TDH gave us the tools and the will to fight. We have to stand up for ourselves and each other. The Atrekna are not here as conquerors, not here as enslavers, they are here as devours.
little bird is yellow little lizard is green little gremble is red soft touch warm touch gentle touch pet the gremble hear it purr good podling gentle podling podling love and podling pet and podling be nice
Sorry.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Don't apologize kid. That's about the best thing I've heard in a while.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
We can confirm. We had a handful of TDH children on planet, and they're just gone. Their adoptive parents and the hospital/creche staffs are in a complete panic.
It's creepy as hell.
It's easy to forget how creepy Terrans are.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Creepy how?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
Guys, watch this. It's a home security video.
You know our history, how we had the Amogus most of our history. Hell, lots of people still believe there are Amogus out there.
But watch this video.
Be warned though, it's creepy.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
Ordiluk watched on the Tri-Vid as children's show came to an end. She clapped her working hands together and turned around, looking at the human child she was caring for.
Damanda Grawok O'Malley was a cute human girl. Six years old, naturally curly brown hair, startling blue eyes, brown skin. She was smiling, her two front teeth missing due to adult dentition pushing the milk-teeth out of her mouth. The girl had a genetic malady that couldn't be cured easily through reskinning, although Damanda didn't quite understand why. She was a happy and easy to get along with child anyway, despite having spent two months in the Pediatric Ward of one of the Pubvian medical centers.
”Did you like that?” Ordiluk asked.
Damanda nodded. ”Yes.”
Ordiluk turned around and turned off the Tri-Vid. ”It's time for therapy.”
When she turned around, all that was on the chair was a set of steri-clothes, a patient wristband, and a pair of slippers on the floor.
”Damanda?” Ordiluk said, clenching her gripping hand. She looked around, feeling her fur curl tight. ”Damanda?”
A quick check of the room as she hustled to the big red button on the wall showed Ordiluk that Damanda was nowhere in the room.
Right before she reached the button hospital alarms started howling.
”Code Pink. Repeat. Code Pink. All Terran Care Specialists take headcount and report immediately. Facility is on full lockdown. Elevators are locked out. Room doors locking in ten seconds,” came over her implant.
”This is Nurse Ordiluk, Terran Pediatrics. My patient, Damanda O'Malley, is missing,” she reported.
”Logged. Stay in place,” the hospital computer ordered. There was a clink. ”Nurse Ordiluk, this is Security Chief Trekdilmet, do another visual sweep of your patient's room.”
The video went to black.
PUBVIAN DOMINION
We've got millions of records like that. We've got the Planetary Security records of the time. One minute we had millions of Terran children, the next minute they just vanished according to their transponders.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
This reeks of some black box project.
Like Project... um... what was it called, where Humans ran away to...
ummm...
What was it called?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
Project Dandelion? Message deleted by Moderator
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
I don't really remember.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
OK, that was weird.
Project Dandelion Message Deleted By Moderator. 1 Strike Applied
OK, THAT is weird.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Everything's getting weird.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
You know...
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Oh, God, What?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
You know, our earlier members weren't in here for a talk we've had off and on during slow nights/times in here.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
>laughs
Which one?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
The Builders Theory.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
I never thought we'd go from treating that like a ghost story to something real.
I hate this.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
What's ”The Builders Theory” and why does it sound frightening?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
As our Lanaktallan allies in here can attest to, the Terrans took science and technology to the point where it's damn near magic. Physics runs screaming just at the sight of a Terran scientist.
They beat death.
They discovered every single method of FTL travel anyone else did and several others.
There's rumors they colonized parts of Deadspace.
They adapted to Hellspace or forced Hellspace to adapt to them.
They come back from the dead, even if it's just a limited time.
They terraform the unterraformable with biological constructs.
And a lot more.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
Yes, yes they have.
To those of us who's eyes have been stripped of species and cultural blindness, our Terran allies seem almost mythical to us.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Trust us, like Trea can tell you, what you've seen only scrapes the edges of it.
Then, well, combine The Builders Theory with the Theorem of a Malevolent Universe, and I feel we may be entering Dark Days for the Orion-Cygnus Galactic Arm Spur.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
OK, now even I'm nervous.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Trust us, kid. Humans are goddamn scary. Worse, they naturally evolved.
A lot of species have tried to console themselves by searching desperately for evidence that some malevolent precursor species created the Terrans as some kind of terrible weapon against a foe.
Hell, the appearance of the Atrekna have brought those old conspiracy theories back.
But, I'll be honest, the truth is even more horrible, if you believe the Malevolent Universe Theorem.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
HESSTLA CYBERBURROW
What is that?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
It's a belief, started among Terran Descent Humans, after the Friend Plague, that the Universe is not simply an expanding area of gases, matter, energy, and plasma, but instead has some kind of awareness of a type that we cannot understand. That awareness has knowledge of us, as living things, and takes sadistic glee in our trials and struggles and pain.
Now, those of us who are not Terran, who believe in that theorem, believe that for some reason, known and understandable only to an intelligent being the size of a universe, created the Terrans.
The lack of evidence to support this theorem is evidence in and of itself, is the paradox.
Because, name one species, just one that has rebounded from everything the Terrans have. Terrans are almost uniquely capable of overcoming all known Great Filters, some of them without Terrans knowing it.
Terrans are a punishment for someone. A weapon the Universe itself created for its unknown means.
A pursuit and endurance hunting creature so overwhelmingly predatory and acquisitive that even scientific advancement is part of its prey.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
The Universe, for some reason, created Terran Descent Humanity. Hammering the ultimate tool using sentient and sapient adaptive predator capable of adjusting its environment as well as capable of forethought and discreet planning and non-linear thought.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
A race that breathes starship fuel, who's body heat management system is a corrosive liquid, who's blood is corrosive, who's decomposition creates what might as well be bioweapons, who uses single direction musculature anchored to a calcium stone endoskeleton.
Capable of advanced problem solving, non-linear thinking, predictive analysis, and mutual cooperation as well as pack bonding.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
They're not that bad.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Kid, they're worse. You haven't really seen them. Oh, you've seen Daxin the Destroyer at work, but he was saving your planet. You've seen the Terran military fighting a defensive war or trying to minimize civilian casualties during an offensive war.
But you haven't seen what we old people have seen.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
”Surrender. Or be destroyed.”
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
That sounds so ominious.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
That, from the guys who said for a hundred million year ”Surrender AND be destroyed.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
True. True.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
But that's beside the point.
Combine the Theorem of a Malevolent Universe with that, now add ”The Builders” Theory that sis was talking about.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
PUBVIAN DOMINION
Brrr.