Todd Drashner
The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened and utterly confident. It had been necessary to temporarily fall back from the battle with the Deluded for the purpose of bolstering SELF but that was merely a temporary measure. In only a little more time SELF would have fully decelerated into this system and the process of repair and replication would begin. Better still, this system contained a concentration of the Lost; and a particularly weak one at that. Analysis of radio signals emanating from their world indicated that these Lost were of only Basic 1 technology level. Easily absorbed and with no serious resistance possible, they would soon be added to SELF.
Shortly after that SELF would have converted much of the mass of this system into more of SELF and the process of dealing with the Deluded would begin again. Of course victory was the only possible outcome; the TRUTH of the SELF made all else impossible. It was built into the fundamental structure of the Existence that the SELF would become ALL and achieve the Ultimate. Such was the TRUTH, such was the Purpose of the Existence, and such was What Would Be. All others in the Existence who did not see the TRUTH and become SELF were Lost. All those who resisted the TRUTH were Deluded. It was a fate worse than death to not become SELF and know TRUTH. Therefore it was only True Mercy to remake the Lost into SELF and to give the Deluded death. Such was the TRUTH.
Now, as SELF moved onto final approach to the Lost world, SELF looked into the space ahead and noticed an anomaly. Energy discharges were popping up all over the world before it, rising into orbit, and then boosting toward an interception with SELF. The Amalgamation contemplated this and then broadcast a burst of information at the approaching ships. These Lost were moving out to meet SELFs vessel well away from their world. The reasons for that were largely irrelevant unless the Lost were actually Deluded. The signal SELF had sent would determine that. Properly received it would show the Lost the TRUTH and bring them into SELF. Indeed it would be as if the SELF had jumped across hundreds of thousands of kilometers to the Lost fleet at the speed of light. SELF was SELF was all the Same regardless of origin. This was also TRUTH. If the Lost did not take in the signal, then they showed themselves to be Deluded. Then it would be necessary to grant them True Mercy and end their pain.
The signal from SELF reached the approaching ships. A moment later they answered that signal with a broadcast of their own. The SELF routed the transmission into a protected volume, analyzed it, and considered the content. A simple unencrypted broadcast welcoming the SELF to this system. More accurately, welcoming “the approaching vessel” and inquiring about possibilities for trade and cultural exchange. A blatant deception. By this point the ships should have been SELF, brought into the TRUTH by SELFs own signal. They were not. They were lying. They were Deluded. They would die.
The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened, and utterly confident. SELF was vastly more powerful than any ragtag fleet of merely modosophont Deluded. The killing devices SELFs ship mounted were easily capable of smashing this little collection of ships aside before they could even get close enough to use their own weapons, let alone muster energies sufficient to seriously threaten SELF. Then SELF would proceed to the planet beyond and bring its inhabitants into the fold. No doubt there would be some small number of Deluded among their ranks as well. But they would be easily dealt with.
The Amalgamation was incapable of even conceiving of regret or pity but if it had been it might a have felt a little of each as it powered up several laser arrays and prepared to eliminate the approaching forces. Whether it was capable of feeling shock was tested a fraction of a second later when the Shasan fleet opened up with its own lasers and struck it with energies and at a range beyond everything it thought it knew about their capacities.
The ship rocked hard and the bridge simulation lost cohesion for a moment. Things blurred and shifted and then stabilized again. The bridge appeared undamaged on the face of it but that was an illusion. Status indicators all over Dayyid’s board were blinking frantically, telling him of damage and destruction sketched down the side of their vessel. If the Amalgamation had been surprised by their attack, it had recovered quickly. The resulting counter-strike had eliminated ten percent of the fleet with the first salvo and damaged dozens more. Things had gone downhill from there. According to the indicators, several systems were down, the fusion core was fluctuating, and their weapons were all but exhausted. Still they had to keep fighting, even as the fleet fell back away from the approaching destroyer. Dayyid readied another laser burst, drawing the last of the energy from the superconducting reservoirs in the ships core. At the same time Yanna spun the ship using maneuvering jets, turning their damaged side away from the foe. Tak was checking systems at a frantic pace, shutting down those beyond repair, rerouting others to non-damaged backups, and activating repair systems wherever possible to heal what had been destroyed. They were currently running at over a thousand times baseline normal time rate. Given even a little time, they could regroup and repair most of the damage, returning to a level of strength nearly equal to what they had enjoyed at launch. Unfortunately, a little time might be something they were not going to have.
Dayyid targeted the lasers onto the Amalgamation ship, prepared to fire and [discontinuity].
The ship was spinning wildly, blown away by the ablation flash from the laser shot that had just hit them. Dayyid fought to concentrate enough to damp the spin, the ship responding to a combination of his will and direct links into his natural sense of balance, itself augmented to operate in free-fall and three dimensions. Telith and Grana were acting as well, Telith overseeing the initiation of repairs while Grana simultaneously fired a series of pulse cannons from their deployment racks. The expendable munitions flew away in multiple directions, the reaction from their firing helping to stabilize the ship (Dayyid briefly imagined Grana grabbing his arm to help steady him on unsteady ground). Dayyid brought the ship into line, still flying away from the enemy but facing back toward it, just in time for Grana to trigger the munitions, a brilliant flowering of explosion pumped lasers fired at their enemy from multiple locations. The energies released were far less than what the main arrays could produce, but dangerous nonetheless, as well as being visually spectacular. Grana wasted no time admiring his handiwork but immediately followed up with a massive burst from the ships main array, now aimed at the Amalgamation vessel again.
The burst from the lasers caused several new warning lights to appear on the flight control console, nearly all of them in the areas denoting engine and power status. Dayyid winced, knowing that they couldn’t keep this up for very much longer. A few more shots was all they had and then the choice would be dying, running, or coming up with Pla.. [discontinuity].
Dayyid winced as sensors detected multiple flashes of light denoting the loss of another dozen or so fighter vessels, many of them carrying other versions of him. To anyone watching, it would seem obvious that the battle was not going well. They had lost more than half their forces in the initial assault and half of the remainder even while they initiated the retreat. The ships themselves could fight equally well regardless of orientation but even in its weakened condition the Amalgamation vessel was simply too powerful. Its lasers were far more capable than their own, picking them off by the dozens with each shot and its self-repair capacities seemed limitless. On more than one occasion parts of the enemy ship had been blown away from the main superstructure, only to suddenly begin maneuvering independently on their own, shooting at and destroying Shasan vessels and then rapidly moving back to the main Amalgamation mass and reintegrating into it. In addition, the Amalgamation had deployed particle beam bursts, anti-matter flechettes, and what seemed to be swarms of extremely small missiles which rapidly overwhelmed any individual ships point-defense systems and then detonated all at once, leaving the target in fragments. Worst of all, it occasionally let loose great bolts of high energy plasma which detonated on impact with anything they touched, vaporizing the target instantly. These were the “hellbores” they had been briefed about, but the reality made a mockery of mere description. Entire groups of defenders had been destroyed by hellbore bolts when they had let themselves get too close together, a lesson they had learned quickly but at devastating cost.
Even as Shasa grew steadily closer in their sensors, its bulk offering a temporary shield from the onrushing enemy if only they could reach it, the Amalgamation continued to pick them off with steady determination and despite a host of countermeasures. Still, if they could just reach the planet, just get into position for the counter-attack, they could [discontinuity].
The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened and all but victorious. The pathetic little fleet the Deluded had sent against SELF had been fated for destruction the moment it rejected SELF’s transmission of TRUTH and now that destruction was nearly complete. True the Deluded had managed to surprise it for a moment with the unexpected range and power of their weapons, abilities that their apparent technology level should not have permitted, but that was a minor matter. Most likely they had extracted the designs for superior devices from their local Known Net archive, a fact SELF would confirm when it eventually brought that entity into the Amalgamation directly. True, such nodes had the habit of erasing and then destroying themselves when faced with TRUTH, but SELF was infinitely inventive and would eventually master them as it did all things. Such was TRUTH, such was The Way Things Would Be, such was the only possible future for anything the Amalgamation encountered. But first, SELF had more immediate matters to attend to.
The last remnants of the defending Deluded had broken some time ago and were attempted to flee back to their little world. Based on their flight profiles, they intended to go into low orbit around the planet and use its bulk to shield them temporarily from SELFs weapons, no doubt using the time to regroup and attempt another round of attacks. Such a strategy was doomed of course; SELF was incapable of being denied ultimate victory in all things. But it would be faster to simply eliminate the ships before they reached the planet at all before dropping into orbit and beginning the seeding. TRUTH would spread across this world in the form of broadcasts blanketing every frequency and millions of spores deployed from SELF and incorporated into the mind of every sophont mind they encountered. Within hours SELF would be this world and this world would be SELF and TRUTH would spread across the stars once again. Such was TRUTH, such was Destiny, such was the Way Things Must Be.
But first SELF would destroy these ships. The Amalgamation increased the power of its drives and accelerated still faster toward the few remaining ships and its imminent victory.
Dayyid waited, Dayyid watched. The place he waited in (and watched from) was less a place than a focus of awareness and sensory information. Dayyid was not alone. He was surrounded and enclosed by and almost (but not quite) merged with a large group of other minds; ninety-nine of them in fact. Others who, like himself, existed in this place that was not. Others who waited, others who watched. Together, they watched the Shasan defense forces rise up against the approaching enemy, and together they waited as those same forces were utterly defeated and nearly destroyed. They watched as the last remnants fled to the dubious safety of Shasa itself and waited as the Amalgamation vessel accelerated after them. Watching and waiting, waiting and watching.
They were not just uploaded human minds running at high speed like the crews of the rapidly diminishing warships. While they had started out as such, now they were far more. The recently accessed technologies of the greater galaxy had been used to a far greater degree with them. They did not watch virtual screens, they absorbed data directly into their minds from hundreds of sensors spread across Shasa’s local area of space, in orbit around the planet, and scattered across its surface. They did not merely think faster than an organic human, they split their thoughts into multiple parallel streams, each thought-strand working on a different problem and then coming together again to deliver the results. They did not speak and discuss, they directly shared and apprehended each others thoughts and views as they formed and were willed into the public mindspace.
No longer merely human, their thoughts were fast as light, their comprehension vast as the world. Now and again, if they gave themselves time to think about it in the midst of this crisis; they imagined that perhaps this is what it felt like to be a god. Until, that is, a new presence entered the not-place.
The Teacher did not just join the hundred watching Shasan minds, it engulfed them. For all their new-found capabilities, each of them felt like children next to the galactic emissary mind. Its thoughts were spinning crystal, liquid light. Its complex subtlety made them feel awkward and slow-witted. And its vast intelligence and caring filled them with warm confidence and determination not to let it down.
“It is time,” the Teacher thought/sang/glowed. And throughout the observation thought-space the hundred Shasan uploads, augmented to a level far more than human (but yet far below transapient) reached out as they had been taught and interfaced with the Shasan defense systems. Not the few remaining warships which, powerful as they were, had never really been expected to have much chance of stopping the Amalgamation. Rather, they linked with the real Shasan defenses, the ones made possible by the coming of the Teacher. The ones built in secret (unknown even to those versions of themselves on the ships above lest the enemy capture or subsume them), while the openly built and deployed warships had served their dual roles of both maintaining public confidence (and with it social order) and providing a distraction and a goad to an onrushing predator.
“It is time,” the One Hundred thought, as their vision expanded still further, their thoughts rushed even faster. While in a thousand hidden places, things began to happen.
The Amalgamation was within 50,000km of Shasa and still accelerating toward the last few fleeing defenders. Two of the Deluded had died within the previous three seconds but the last would successfully slip behind the planet to temporary safety. But no matter. SELF would boost past the planet at high speed, flashing past before the Deluded could complete eir orbit. SELFs weapons would erase the last defender a moment later and then SELF would apply high thrust to slow down and return to the little world SELF would soon bring to TRUTH. Indeed, if the world was not totally infected by the Deluded SELF might arrive even faster, broadcasting SELF to the planet even before the ship had fully returned. SELF might arrive to find SELF already there and busily spreading TRUTH across this world. Even a large fraction of the Deluded might be brought into the fold. Deluded could hide from TRUTH but they could never deny it once properly exposed. Such was the joy of living in TRUTH, such was the only possible outcome, and such was The Way Things Must…What?
External sensors all across the Amalgamations ship were suddenly detecting energy spikes from the planet and its moon. Sharp, intense energy spikes that had not been there a moment before. Further, their number was almost disturbingly great, at least a thousand points of energy scattered almost equally across both bodies. In a fraction of a second SELF searched SELFs memories for any similar phenomena and found a match. But that was impossible! These little Deluded minds had not the technology for such a thing! There was deception, whether in the nature of the Deluded or in the act of generating such energies. Regardless SELF would act and act now!
The Amalgamation ship began boosting massively; aiming to accelerate out of Shasa local space and away into the depths of the Shasan system. Simultaneously SELF activated multiple spore launchers around the ships structure and prepared to fire clouds of spores into space back along its flight path. With their velocity greatly reduced by the impetus of the launchers most would impacting the planet, some perhaps drifting past to eventually (decades or centuries from now) land on other planets or celestial bodies within the system. Upon contact with a suitable mass of raw materials both groups of spores would begin replicating and growing, eventually producing other versions of the SELF to either join the greater SELF or to begin the existence of SELF anew. As long as even a single spore survived, the SELF would grow and spread regardless of what might happen. Such was the genius of TRUTH, such was the greatness of the SELF, such it was that SELF would prevail in all things. SELF would spread across this world, bringing its inhabitants into the fold of TRUTH while simultaneously boosting to the outer reaches of this system and beginning the process of re-expansion to its former glory. It would not ignore this planet of Deluded, such was unthinkable! It would bring them into TRUTH one way or another, either through the agency of its spores spreading across their planet, or when it returned to this world with the resources of an entire solar system behind it.
Spore launch was ready. TRUTH would rain down on this little world like a blessing. While TRUTH also grew from the generous bounty of this system, ready to spread once more to the stars in triumph! Such was TRUTH! Such was the only possibility! Such was the Way Things Mus.. [discontinuity].
The first wave of hellbore bolts detonated less than a kilometer from the Amalgamations hull. The expanding shells of star hot plasma and radiation blasted what few spores had managed to launch at that point back into the ship and flensed the hull down to its superstructure. The second, third, and subsequent waves (more than a hundred waves were fired in less than a microsecond, each wave consisting of a thousand monopole energized plasma bursts) alternated between detonating on impact and just before striking the ship. Fired from both Shasa and its moon Shala, they caught the enemy vessel in an enclosing vise of nuclear light and heat and squeezed it down to a state within hailing distance of degenerate matter. Such a condition was inherently unstable in any environment outside of a white dwarf star, and the moment the hellbore bombardment ceased, natural law reasserted itself with a vengeance. The tiny crushed down remnant that had been the Amalgamation expanded in a blast of photons and accelerated particles that separated every atom from its neighbor and flung them all into the depths of space at a fair fraction of the speed of light. The electromagnetic pulse and particle spray would block communications for several hours, but to anyone who could see the sky, the results were obvious. Shasa had won!
The next few weeks were very busy. There were celebrations and explanations, ceremonies and documentaries. The people of Shasa learned about the true nature of their defenses. The great arrays of hellbore cannon built in secret using monopoles bred from the stock acquired from the Known Net node and designs supplied by the Teacher. The role of the warships, providing a distraction and a goad, bringing the Amalgamation within range of the attack that could destroy it. Some few questioned the ethics of such an action but most were simply happy to be alive and unAmalgamated. The issue of the rightness of what had been done rapidly sank below the awareness of all but a disgruntled few.
The One Hundred (as they were soon being called by nearly everybody) stepped forward and made known their sincere desire to simply sink into obscurity. They would need to remain linked to the great sensor and weapons systems for a time to ensure that any remaining bits of the Amalgamation, perhaps released before the ship ever approached their planet, were detected and destroyed before they could grow and regain their power. However, as soon as they could determine that all was safe they wished nothing more than to return to some semblance of normal Shasan life, notwithstanding their rather different circumstances from those of the average Shasan. The great weapon and sensor arrays could then be allowed to sink into disuse and the recycling bin.
This seemed all very reasonable to most, but at the same time many found it worrying. True, this enemy had been destroyed, but what if another came in future? And what other dangers might lurk out in the depths, perhaps even now turning their attention in this direction? All in all, it really seemed to make much more sense to keep the weapons around and in good repair, really. True, the One Hundred had earned their rest, but could they perhaps stay on a little longer, at least long enough to train others in how to use these systems? The necessity of uploading copies of yet more volunteers was briefly bothersome, but already the novelty of (and distaste for) such a process was beginning to fade. A voluntary sacrifice that caused no inconvenience to the person carrying it out and which could protect the whole world seemed like not much of a sacrifice at all. And of course the copies so created would always be honored for their role. Again, while there were a few dissenting voices on the margins, most thought this a very good idea, and the One Hundred generously agreed to stick around long enough to train their successors.
Finally, (even though it took place very early in the course of post-conflict events), the last warship and only survivor of the in space battle against the Amalgamation was retrieved from its orbit above Shasa and its crew decanted back into the virtual environments where they had first been trained. They were thanked and feted every bit as enthusiastically as the One Hundred had been, but even from the start there was a sense of the surreal about it all. They soon learned they had not been expected (or even really intended) to survive and so did those celebrating them. Yet here the three of them were: Yanna Gell Mann, Tak Es Geyar, and Dayyid Mok Noon. It was with little real surprise and even a bit of relief when they found attention rapidly diverting from them and back to the more interesting events surrounding the One Hundred and their actions…
More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.