Chapter 487 (1/2)

It had not been easy, but the Atrekna had done it.

Before, it had never required so many attempts, required so much effort, required so much sacrifice and so many resources.

In the tens of billions of years of the Atrekna's life cycle, starting with dominating their own planet, then their genesis system, then their local cluster, then their galaxy, then their entire universe, never had they had such difficulties.

Normally, throughout their eternal history, they were able to shift an entire solar system of beings to examine. Speeding up and slowing down and even reverting time. Later, once it was discovered that their temporal powers were sapping their universe's life, they would move an entire planet, even a city, and examine any enemy or potential food source by the millions.

Not this time.

The new universe was resistant to their efforts. The further back one attempted to reach, the more power was required, until it was virtually impossible for the Atrekna to harness enough power to reach any further back. Prior, in their own universe, no matter how far back one reached it required the same amount of power.

Moving forward did not guarantee that one would experience the outcome one had moved too once time had progressed normally.

The tactic of finding the timestream that allowed only the Atrekna to be victorious, sending forward a Conclave or a Convocation to manipulate the time stream to ensure the proper results occurred, was no guarantee that the proper results could be shepherded.

Previously even the least statistical likelihood could be manipulated into occurring.

The new universe struggled and fought against such things.

Normally, the Atrekna could look forward, backward, to the side, and see thousands, millions of branching timelines, select the one they wished to ensure was the primary temporal string, and then reach into the other temporal branches to loot them for resources.

Here, the web of branching timelines only extended a limited distance back or forward. Timelines too alike, too identical, collapsed into one another without even a hint, possessing an almost automatic error checking and consolidation system. Time forward became hazy and indistinct and a major occurrence could cause entire branches of possible futures to collapse into neighboring timestreams. Time back collapsed into a single point, with the alternate timelines spun around the core line, until they matched closely enough and plunged into the timeline.

In their former universe, they would select the most profitable outcome for the Atrekna and ensure that was the one that came to pass, even selecting preferred historical temporal branchings to ensure that it was the Atrekna who got what they want.

Wars were won before they were fought as the carefully shepherded timelines collapsed as the Atrekna wished them to, ensuring Atrekna dominance in their universe.

But the New Universe was different.

The chronotrons were not only active, but the Atrekna considered them hyperactive. They not only influenced one another, but other particles, permeating everything.

It had been over a billion years since the Atrekna had discovered any amount of chronotrons 'in the wild' in numbers enough to examine.

The Atrekna were surrounded by energy, the type of energy they alone had been privy to in their old universe, that they alone had been able to control during the Great Harvest of the new universe a billion years ago.

Phasic energy, which had long ago wound down to only a slight static discharge between two dead dimensions rubbing against two dead universes, was a wild ravening cascade of energy in the New Universe.

The Atrekna discovered that it was quite easy to attempt to control and harness more phasic energy then the one making the attempt could actually control.

All of the abundance of power should have made what they wanted to do child's play.

Yet they had not been able to do it.

Yes, they had been able to lock down the primitive primate's genesis system, by using their own protective system against them. It was related to their entropic fortress they had left behind in the Old Universe, and quite easy to manipulate.

An attempt at using the artificially created singularities to destroy the system that they were designed to protect had failed miserably. After eight such attempts, and nearly twenty-four fatalities, they had given that up.

Next was an attempt to capture a system in a temporal dislocation. While it was often successful in the Old Systems, where the Atrekna had first established themselves in the New Universe, attempting the same strategy with the Feral Race were unsuccessful.

The Feral Race seemed to be temporally locked, as well as able to conflate the past, future, and present, to build on all of them.

It was an exercise in frustration to the Atrekna.

Capturing cities was next. Easily accomplished in the Old Systems.

Except where the Feral Race was present in any number. Those stubbornly refused temporal isolation and removal.

In recent battles, the Atrekna had discovered that it was possible to temporally disrupt the Feral Race, but constant energy had to be expended, it required constant oversight.

In the cataclysmic battle that the Atrekna had determined had resulted in the destruction of the Old Universe, the Atrekna had discovered that temporal manipulation was resource intensive in a geometrically ascending rate according to not only the Feral Race's temporal weaponry, but according to the number of Feral Race present.

After the battle, as the cascading tsunami of temporal resonance had roared out of the death throes of the Old Universe, the Atrekna had been scattered.

They had slowly regrouped in several Old Systems. They had reached out to gather their old harvests.

And found their harvest storage destroyed.

They had attempted to take control of their Old Systems, and in many cases, found themselves rebuffed by the Feral Race and their weapons.

Worse, the Feral Race seemed to show up at any system the Atrekna seized, entering it with weapons and shields ready, cleared for combat, and gleefully engaging in slaughtering the Atrekna and their slavespawn until the system was in their possession.

The De-Evolution Recursion Method had, at first, produced less than optimal results. If anything, the Feral Race had become even more frenzied, had become thick and rich with phasic energy, but also more aggressive, violent, and capable of withstanding the Atrekna.

When the Old Universe had collapsed, the De-Evolution Recursion Method, nearly spend and abandoned by the Atrekna as a failure, had roared to life. Reenergized by the temporal resonance cascade, it had struck at the Feral Race.

Almost all of the Feral Race had gone extinct.

At first the Atrekna rejoiced. That potential timeline had been the one they had been working to ensure occurred.

But not all of the Feral Race had died.

The battle for what the natives called ”Laglun-3 ” had proved that. A single member of the Feral Race had required more effort to hold in place than shifting the entire star system, if it had been unprotected, would have required.

The Atrekna twisted their feeding tentacles into knots trying to figure out how to ensure that the Feral Race was eliminated.

The younger ones, who had been hatched after the Great Harvest, kept inquiring why the Atrekna did not use their normal tactics of ensuring only the proper timeline was energized and made prime.

When they were told the New Universe did not work that way, they had scoffed. They had hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, of experience. This universe was almost identical to their old one, just more energetic.

But the Young Ones failed just as the Elders had.

On another world, a single Feral had rebuffed and destroyed an entire Quorum. System after System were falling to combat teams of a dozen Ferals. Fleets moved through the dark silence of space, searching out any Atrekna held systems, and swooping down to liberate the system.

Worse, as shown on Laglun-3 and other systems, a single Feral Race member could completely disrupt plans and destroy shadowy decades of work as those Atrekna working to ensure a past branching timeline became dominant were cast back to the present and those working to ensure a future timeline either dissolved or were rejected into the dominant timeline.

The Atrekna's most powerful weapons, the manipulation of timestreams, alternate timelines, temporal branch collapse, and temporal conjuctions, temporal and spacial shifting, and temporal replication were next to useless.

The Feral Race did not lessen during repeated battles, they did not even remain parity like the Atrekna, but they increased in power, resources, and remembered the previous tactics.

The latter was the worst. They somehow brought knowledge from the previous recursion into the current and future recursions.

The Atrekna had no choice.

They began expending effort and resources.

It had taken a hundred battlefields. Dozens of Atrekna had died in the attempts.

But they had finally done it.

They had taken a living Feral Race captive.

Only a single one.

They had been forced to use physical methods. A ship slightly out of temporal phase. Slavespawn to attack and capture. The ship to move the Feral Race member through spacial dimensions to what the Atrekna had prepared.

It was an older theory. Normally crafted from temporal, phasic, and pure energy, they had to emulate the primitive species of the New Universe and utilize actual mass to create the holding area.

The Young Ones, who were hatched and survived to adulthood after the Great Harvest, who had not been sent to engage the Feral Race as they still possessed the ability to generate larvae, scoffed at the Ancient and Elder One's preperations.

It was a single Feral, a primitive, a primate. Why would it need an entire Convocation to oversee it.

The Ancient and Elder Ones, not willing to risk the Young Ones, who were mainly valuable for their ability to create new Atrekna, simply responded that this was the way that had been determined to have the highest chance for success.

They did not tell the Young Ones that the Feral Race member blocked and disrupted their ability to examine future temporal branches and choose the choices that would make the most acceptable temporal branch be the one to come about. That because it involved the member of the Feral Race, it was as if chaos itself was on its side.

The Elder and Ancient Ones were forced to meditate, to examine genetic memory, looking for any scientific or philisophical knowledge that might help with the problem of the Feral disrupting their ability to choose the correct actions to ensure the most acceptable timeline came to be.

One, millions of years old, found it, deep within genetic memory.

Chaos Theory.

There was mathematics, logical structures, to chaos. While the theories and philosophies were there, the hard mathematics were not.

But the Atrekna were confident they could once again rediscover such theories.

Unfortunately, by the time the Feral had reached the 'examination facility' that orbited a neutron star, they had not managed to create the mathematics they had once possessed.

It was galling to admit, but they no longer knew how to produce such massive ships as the ancient shipyards had been capable of producing. Irreplaceable hyper-valuable shipyards.

That the Feral Race had blown up without a single thought.

How the Feral Race disregarded the Law of Sustainability and the Law of a Resource Finite Universe made the Atrekna burn with a cold fury.

Rather than attempt to disable the ship fabrication yards and seize the valuable resources, the Feral Race had ignited the gas giants and destroyed them, losing valuable mass and matter, not to mention the more valuable and esoteric sub-quantum particles.

The Atrekna often deduced that the Feral Race seemed intent on destroying all matter, energy, space that they could not control.

It was insane.

The universe was finite. Destroying those resources lessened all, even the Feral Race, but the Feral Race seemed not to care.

They had to know what drove such an insane species.

How had they managed to become sentient? How did they gain sapience? How did they develop technology? Who had given them the secrets of superluminal travel? Who had given them the secrets of advanced metallurgy? Who had prevented them from destroying themselves during their encounter with the Great Industrial Filter? Who was their benefactor? Where had their benefactor gone? What was their plans?

What was a dick and how would one eat it?