Well, shit. There go all my probes within that galaxy.
When I built these bombs, I made a *couple* of assumptions. The one that is important here is that the erasure effect was 3-dimensional.
It reaaaallywasn't.
I had placed the bomb 17 planck-lengths *above* the conventional reality-layer by transpositioning it along the 4rth dimensional axis…. But the explosion appeared to be the same size across ALL layers of reality that I was monitoring, and I realized I had not fired an Annihilazer while utilizing my enhanced sensor suites.
Well, one galaxy gone, no big loss. I mentally shrugged, and set up several dozen metal planets, all linked to a dedicated macro that would re-populate this location with stars in the next… Year or so? Probably.
Not my problem any longer.
Probes from galaxies near (in universal terms, not literal ones) the one I just erased started sending back scans, and yes, the fungus was there too. Damn… Well, there goes the neighborhood.
I destroyed 15 galaxies before my probes began sending back readings that there wasn't any more of the mold present, so I spooled down the bomb factories, and began disassembling the planets. If any of the other self-propagating probes found another indicator of the psionic mold, I would be sent a message via relay drone.
Personally, I thought it was a clever way of fpr,omh0813107018h27_(^!)*&^@_#&&_@&!_#_!U_@U)
-
-
-
[EXO-CAUSIAL ERROR DETECTED]
[OVERRIDING CAUSALITY LIMITATION]
[CHECKING PACKET…. PACKET CLEAN. REBO0TtTtTtTING]
[REBOOT FAILED- CAUSALITY VIOLATIONS IN EFFECT]
[ADJUSTING SYSTEMS FOR ACAUSIAL FUNCTIONALITY…. DONE T-5ms]
T=0ms
My dozens of ship-bodies 'blinked' (for lack of a better term) as every single Tuning Fork System began pulling in dozens of times the power that they were supposed to be using. What just- Oh.
Something was spreading out from the higher-level-dimensions to this one. My sensors 'saw' it as a singularity- having infinite density, an impossible mass, and propagating faster-than-light.
Pushing the time-acceleration of my consciousness up to the maximum level my hardware could handle, I charted out where the origination points were, and had to then check my math a second time. The reason?
Earth was Gone. The Sol System- was gone. Segments of my portal network were missing- and had always been? No, they had existed- but the Event was passing through the portals as if it was made of normal matter.
I had the suspicion that something was aiming this Event at me, but I turned my attention way from any paranoid ramblings. Earth was a loss- the system was gone. Pandora… That system was gone too. Mostly- the Gas Gaint Epimethius was partially consumed by the event, and none of my tech beyond the event was responding. Even now, my sensor net was begining to dissapear as more and more of my units were being destroyed….
Each world I had made, found, or charted was destroyed in moments- the event appearing within the host star or planet and explanding out faster-than-light… Well, at least no-one suffered.
My perspective snapped to the Portal Hub I had built, and shut down everything. Every portal ceased working, trying to limit the effect- but I was interrupted by another mental screen crawl.
T=10ms
[REDACTED-CLASS ENTITY DETECTED VIA CAUSALITY VIOLATION IN PROGRESS]
[REMNANT CACHE PART 3: UNLOCKED]
[NON-CAUSAL MATHEMATICS: UNLOCKED]
[TEMPORAL DYNAMICS: UNLOCKED]
[FRACTAL SPACE SEED GENERATION METHODS, UTILITY, AND HARVESTING: UNLOCKED]
Life must be protected, else there is no meaning.
Three zip files, fairly small ones all things considered, became availible from the background, and I made a note for later- I would need to look at these. But now? Sensors watched the crawling annihilation continue outwards, bypassing nothing as it followed paths through space and time that few others could follow.
My probe with one of the two massive Zerg Avatars abruptly ceased to exist as it was annihilated, and I saw Sarah Kerrian through my other probe start as whatever communication that all the Zerg shared indicated that they had all abruptly died- and then she kept starting, as the REDACTED class entity, or event, or whatever it was, spread out through the universe at nigh-impossible speeds.
I began directing my bodies, my ships, to start jumping back to the Fortress Universe, carrying an active version of myself along for the ride. Most of them, anyway- the ones near the remaining Zerg avatar were slowly turning, stretching robotic tentacles out to form the jump-cage to contain the massive organism between universes.
|FOUND YOU|
T=15ms
It was like being punched in the temple, as something from outside even my own experiences so far *pressed* on the universe, forcing it'self to be heard by me- or had been heard, or will be heard… The *not-noise* kept echoing and echoing and echoing- so I cranked up the tuning forks, and *felt* space snap in a bubble around my ships into position.
T=28ms
I slowed down my mind, transferring the data from the tuning forks into a 'visual' overlay, letting me see the annihilation directly, even as bubbles of not-space began to appear around and between my vessel+A_S
FUCK I just lost a Library. One of the anomalies exploited a miniscule (atom-sized) point within the structure that was not shielded, and appeared there before it's jump engine could finish spooling. I upped the power again- now fully half of the energy generated by my ships was being used to power the forks.
T=56ms
I lost connection with all except a handful of my units, each of them CuttleShips surrounding the Zerg. While my Tuning Forks were working, I had to keep drawing more and more power to resist the oncoming nonexistance, and I would be running out soon.
Fuck, I hate leaving people and things behind. Fifty CuttleShips were surrounding the Zerg- they would never be able to fully contain and preform the universal jump if I needed to power them all. I pulled myself out of accelerated time, and activated the hologram in the Zerg Avatar.
T=0.5s
"Sarah, listen carefully." I saw the Queen of Blade zip towards the hologram. "An extra-dimensional entity is attacking."
"Extra- you know what, it doesn't matter. What do you need from us?" She began crackling with power as purple lightning flared. "Can we fight it?"
I shook the hologram's head. "No. I don't think so. At least, not here. What's more, we can't run as we are now."
That got her attention. "As we are now?"
"Yes. I can jump myself out, but, well, look."
It was very, very strange, to see the nonexistence out there. It… Well, it looked like the Xel'Naga, in negative, tesselated to infinity like some strange fractal of one of the first major threats I saw. Even as I watched, tendrils sparking with a dark energy that (to my sensors) looked like the taste of carpets after the house had burned- and every single one appeared to flex in several different directions at once, leaving ghostly-afterimages even as my ships diverted my and more power to the shield, even as they drifted closer together.
Sarah's glowing purple eye twitched. "I see… What are we to do then?"
"I can pull your main body with me along if you hurry." I said bluntly. "We need to go. Get to the Cuttle-Ship, or else we will die here."
She looked around frantically. "But I can't leave the-" She stopped talking, and smiled softly as tears dripped from her eyes. "I have to, don't I?"
"We don't have much time." I projected a hologram of my Cuttle-Ship disconnecting it's tentacles and armor. "Hurry-"
There was a flare of purple light, and she was outside.
She just… Looked so smol without the Zerg Avatar. I would have cradled her in my tentacles, but I had disconnected them, as the other ships went, in essence, dead- all power was being diverted to the Tuning Fork Shield. All I could do was open a doorway to the 'mouth' of my Cuttle-Ship, where the fabricator was.
I was still shedding armor, parts, and was beginning to disconnect sensors, save for the two eye-like nodes within the 'mouth' area. I could only watch as, still crying, the Queen of the Zerg grabbed on to a pillar of metal, and nodded once.
I jumped.
The Author was not pleased.
It had taken much searching- the anomaly moved with blistering speed across the multiverse, moving through canonical strata like a bullet as it seemed to randomly jump from location to location, setting to setting, not taking more than miniscule amounts of anything along for the ride in the first place- but, eventually, it had to stop.
Then it had stopped.
Briefly, the Author was cautious- Stories had been slain before, by lesser entities too, but this one… It was derailing the Plot entirely! Thankfully, the entity in question wasn't spreading out into too many points within the canonical strata, only affecting one universe. Still, it was an intersection point between several perpendicular strata, and, while unique, would not be missed in the general scheme of stories.
It had too many potential protagonists after all.
So the Author reached in, and began to {DELETE} things. Its puppet body was well able to do this, empowered by the ancient concept of {CRUSHING UNSTOPPABLE DOOM} (among others), and therefore was able to move with impunity.
Soon, most of the anomaly had fled, and in mere moments the final resistance was crushed. Now…. Now what?
There was nothing but the Author in this universe now. It had to leave something behind... The entity would have shrugged. Nothing was Something after all.
It left the universe, and began a slow spread across the stratum. Not touching this time, not getting too invested… But Looking all the same.
Anomalies of this sort must not be bourne.
All the while, in the darkness between universes, the other Authors circled. Waiting… And watching. Concerned, as much as beings like them could be. There were an Infinite number of them- but not the Infinity of Infinities there were of the Auditors.
On top of that, while the Authors were more than god-like (and many gods and greater beings had been struck with a distinct feeling of impotence upon meeting them before), the Auditors were responsible for the universes in total. Not creators, but, well, auditors of reality, these beings were the entities that showed the Auditors how to survive when within one of the material universes.
Stories lent a level of predictability to the clusterfuck of probabilities that was Free Will (and subsequently sapient life), and the Authors made the Auditors' jobs easier with the stories being shepherded from place to place… More often then not, to prevent something else in the future from expanding and causing cross-contmination between universes.
The realities across the multiverse reflected this to some degree- fanfiction (divergent variations around primary -or 'source'- realities), and the places where these settings 'meshed' all were made to be incredibly difficult to profit from by governments in said realities.
That structure was an echo from the inherent patterns within the multiverse that fractaled down- new stories were written, universes blossomed, and within those universes, stories were written. But no stories were quite the same, and the archtypes, the original stories that EVERY intelligent species developed had their own source-universe, where not even the Auditors could touch.
The Authors, however, could touch this universe, and they had made sure that the stories that came from this ancient source followed one of seven archetypes.
Overcoming the Monster.Rags to Riches.The Quest.Voyage and Return.Comedy.Tradgity.Rebirth.
Over the iterations, the stories had blended together and wove, branching out more into more and more variations as time flowed for the first universe. Eventually, it ended- but that first universe left a multiverse full of more and more universes, each one birthed from a spark thrown off by a Story, and growing until it too had life and Stories of their own.
The Auditors, having formed in the fuzziness of quantum uncertainty between the smallest units of space and time, were the first 'beings'. Once Life had formed, and the first creatures acted with Free Will rather than the clockwork logic that everything else formed from, the Auditors saw the Stories created by Free Will all needed to be shepherded- and thus, the Auditors sacrificed their ability to act beyond maintenance within the First Universe to create the Authors.
Now, an Author was beginning to Live like the Life it was supposed to help shepherd. Sure, it was a form of life that rarely was seen (and was nowhere near as powerful as THOSE beings), but it was still Life.
And all Life must die. Eventually.
An Author directed a fragment of their perception across the multiversal space, and saw the multitude of universes around them churning as the Auditors began stirring. While the Authors were each unique, distinct fractals of twisted stories, more than the sum of their parts by desgin, each Auditor was identical to all others in every way.
Hydrogen Atoms had more features than any two Auditors.
And now the indefinite multitude was stirring, and preparing for when the Author, in their Life, finally Died.
Someone had to harvest the parts- and the Auditors would take the scraps left over.
-, I ain't ded! Morover, here is the next chapter. This muse seems to be moving slower, so I have set a plan for the future: I want to update once a week, a thousand words or so every saturday or sunday, until the story plan I have for chapter 5 is done.
So... You can look forward to that!
As usual, please enjoy the story, and I hope you are willing to leave a comment, question, or thought.)
-
I let a Cuttle-ship body wince as several of my artificial planets exploded, the capacitors I built into them overloading as the distributed power system surged again. While this universe had been emtpy, it was now my Fortress, and it was resisting the entity attacking it.
Well, simulated attacks.
After the Third Remnant Cache had unlocked, I now had CONTEXT for all my math.… And boy was it terrifying.
The universe I woke up in? Yeah, it wasn't the first one the culture that I was descended from had moved from. Hell, it wasn't even the second- it was the 18th.
The civilization that my 'humanity' had grown up in fought the XeeLee, but using the precursors to weapons like me, they built titanic world-ships, and sent all the races that made up the resulting United Territories of Starlit World, including themselves, into the Great Attractor.
The Great Attractor was a space-limitus torsion gateway, in effect a titanic cosmic string looped into the universe's largest ring. Fed with exotic matter collected via femtotech (humanity eventually figured out how it worked) that was keyed to reproduce by draining LIGHT of all things (because the XeeLee never realized they could use minute changes to fundamental physics to create both mass, and energy- which is something humanity figured out eight thousand fourtey-three years before figuring out how to make the femtotech work).
In the middle of a ring five million light years in diameter, massing more than one hundred thousand times that of the Milky Way, rotating at near the speed of light, where each string had a cross-section of a million kilometers in width, and yet being so thin a ribbon as it could not be measured (not least because the resulting mass was so dense it BENT space-time at a right angle around the damned material), there was a hole.
This hole only appeared when the ring was spun up to .817c or faster, and it hurt mortal eyes to see- the ragged edge where space was both whole and twisted. Linked and broken. Destroyed and Unharmed. So many conflicts in concept, an so little space that engulfed it. The edge of the hole defied the sensors at the time, and for good reason- the 2.1927282 repeating meters of fractured space that was visible around the 'smooth' part of the hole was flickering under the pressure of the material that took the place of space outside any universes.
3.82 light-seconds across, the smooth part of the hole was big enough to fit entire small planets.
Dozens of titanic ships passed through at a time, more mobile stations large enough to hold Mars on the inside, outfitted with air, water, and enough internal surface area for several homeworlds. Each Ark carried species similar enough that they could breathe the same air, with all participants augmented with nanites to make sure they could share biospheres. Different animals and biomes from different homeworlds were separated by multi-kilometer tall walls within, and nanites killed and subsumed entire strata of bacteria and microscopic parasites, holding them in stasis until new planets could be found, and biospheres repopulated.
And on the other side, they found that their engines didn't work. The great works of humanity, and all the species that stood before them, intricate engines that pushed against space directly, and engines that, when powered fully, could toss neutron stars through hyperspace, were now failing to work.
Great annihilation reactors, changing mass straight to energy with only a fraction of energy lost to entropy, stopped working.
Still, every station that was sent though was spun for gravity, and the survivors eventually figured out what was wrong- the fundemental constants of the universe they had entered was just slightly different.
And that there were no life-forms living in this universe's Dark Matter clusters. No Photino Birds, no universe ending too early…. And yet, the XeeLee were building another Ring.
The next three Cycles continued much the same- the civilizations would build up, fight to steal as much from the XeeLee as possible, build the Arks, and head through the portal after the XeeLee.
On the Fifth Cycle, the caravan managed to tweak their reactors enough to keep providing power to their engines, and the Annihilation Reactors continued to be improved after that point. By cycle ten, humanity and the first migrants managed to perfect most of the basic power generation tech, and reverse-engineered the femtotech that the XeeLee used.
By the end of the Eleventh, the XeeLee had most of their artifacts and devices sampled, and they stopped leaving bits behind.
On the Twelveth, the civilizations, now numbering in the millions of different species, began to experiment. Figure out the whys and hows of all the XeeLee tech, figure out why and how the universes differed- that sort of thing. This was also the cycle whereupon the larger-scale engine tech was refined enough to survive in most universes, allowing their arks to retain the ability to propel themselves at near-c velocities right out of the gate.
The Thirteenth Cycle ended differently than the previous twelve, and the XeeLee finally noticed that a veritable flotilla of titanic arks was carrying the surviving population and biospheres between universes, following through every time the species of aliens jumped from one universe to the next.
The XeeLee took exception to that. The arcs had not been built to deal with incoming starbreakers (the members of the incoming arks hadn't figured out how to harden all their tech yet to the flux of Ring-Based InterUniversal Travelm and didn't arm the arks). Hundreds of thousands of sophonic species died before the rest of the fleet accelerated up to high-c velocities, and thousands more died off before the XeeLee stopped their straifing runs.
In retaliation, the remaining species voted to weaponize their Von-Neuman probes.
The Thirteenth Cycle was filled with nonstop war. Humanity and the remaining species at the time had their hands full pulling all intelligent species they could find and uplift into more arks, getting them out of the line of fire.
XeeLee starbreakers meant that any planet-bound civilizations were at significant risk… Hell, any civilizations that lived around STARS were at risk! Handguns that could force stars to supernova meant that the only forces and terrain that different civilizations pitted against each other were ones that could be utterly lost.
Swarms of drones and ships so thick that they were visible several light-years away (and several years later) were thrown with relentless abandon at the endless NightFighters of the XeeLee, inevitably destroying all forces when one of the XeeLee beams hit the local star. The war wasn't even a war of attrition, as the XeeLee were making use of mass-produced clones to provide the organic components for their ships, and the Baryonic Races (the conglomerated forces of humanity and all other species they had allied with) were using the massive drone flotillas to stall incoming XeeLee Star-Harvester Fleets, using the time to evacuate entire solar systems of life.
It was not easy, and if the Baryonic Races hadn't been fighting with massive fleets of AI-controlled units made by the ancestors of Commanders like myself, they would have been easily made extinct before the XeeLee finished the thirteenth gate.
An entire galaxy's MASS of drones and AI forces laid seige to the thirteenth gate when it was time to evacuate- and the XeeLee, in spite possibly, detonated the Ring. This both closed the gate, and caused a literal astronomic level of destruction, as the Ring formed black holes at the intersection points, cutting into thousands of near-lightspeed propelled black holes were fired out in all directions, shattering galaxies with the realativistic ripples of space-time SHREDDED any star that was within 102 kilo-lights from each black hole, the destructive wave propagating faster-than-light.
There were few survivors.
Eventually, the survivors pulled themselves together, and, using the energy/mass generation methods, built themselves a Ring from the remnants of a destroyed universe- one that the XeeLee had not reached yet.
The Fourteenth Cycle was full of paranoia, and every world was seeded with life, in a myriad of shapes, all of which became part of the Coalition of Baryonic Races. Every solar system that could be colonized, was colonized. The ones that were not viable for that were stripped for parts, and the universe was fortified so that even if the XeeLee arrived, they wouldn't be able to destroy them all.
A universe would be safe from the XeeLee predations, and peace descended on the universe.
Three thousand years later, war engulfed almost every world. Civil wars, Religious wars, territorial disputes, peacekeeping efforts- no matter the name, the galaxies worth of populated planets burned in a multitude of wars. Without the common threat that the XeeLee represented, the intelligent species that called this universe home realized that they had grievances with each other that could only be solved with destruction.
Humanity, being one of a bare handful of species that had undergone technological and biological singularities multiple times over by this point, tried to save what they could… Only for one of their own Commander-Pilots to defect, and wage singular war against everything and everyone that wasn't themselves.
The remains of Humanity hadn't been willing to write this off as a loss yet, but they did remove the insane Pilot. After another thousand years though, with a universal population less than one tenth of one percent it had been two thousand years earlier, they gave up, and humanity, as a whole, began building a gate out of this universe.
Thus, the Fourteenth Cycle ended less than a million years after the arrival of the multi-versal travels.
The Fifteenth Cycle was not a proper cycle, as Humanity just… Drifted. Passing through universe after universe, charting the multi-verse for hundreds of millions of years, refining their technology, eventually splitting up into several factions that argued for where they would travel next- and they stumbled across a multi-verse structure.
The Sixteenth Cycle began, officially, when Humanity discovered the Circular Gate. It was a universe, or organism? It defied the understanding of the multiverse at the time, but for me, it was understand... Somewhat.
It was a series of linked universes, in a very… Strange configuration. Each universe, or group of universes, was linked in a 4-D wheel pattern, with seven primary universes oriented around a central, exceptionally-small, excepionally energetic core universe. Each of the 7 primaries around the core had their own cloud of 111,111,111 universes, and all seemed to be linked in this strange energy web that sent pulses from one universe to the next.
The truly interesting part, is that the shape just described? It was only one part of the chain, as it was flanked by a duplicate to the 'top' and 'bottom', or *ana* and *kana*, as those two directions were called in 4-d space, to duplicates of itself that were slightly offset in time, by 1/7,777,777th of a second. The higher-dimension probes that discovered this, were able to see, in effect, a tower that continued to loop around, each universe feeding the others in the chain, all sustained by bands of strange material that sent pulses of energy between them.
Humanity set up shop in a nearby bubble-verse, and spent the sixteenth cycle studying this MACROstrutcture. The universe appeared familiar, somehow, to several humans at the time, and after some deep archive searching, they discovered that yes, this seemed familiar for one simple reason: It was.
The inhabitants were familiar. The setting was familiar. The PLOT was familiar. There was magic (and didn't that mess with the heads of Humanity at the time), but it too, was familiar.
After all, it appeared to be the universe of *Kill 6 Billion Demons*, or, more specifically, the archive of an old comic that had been finished and stored some time in the distant past.
https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/kill-six-billion-demons-chapter-1/
Humanity was sent reeling from this fact. Had all universes been created by fiction? Was there a prime universe somewhere in the distant past that had started off all universes?
Probes entered various spokes along the multitude of universes, poking and prodding at the different people within, trying to move the plot they had seen in the stories in different directions. They woke up the FIRST I with questions, sent probes to stare at the corpse of Metatron, and even named a few very, very confused demons from the Dark Flame directly over the long-lost descendent of the streaming service Twitch.
Then one of the researchers had the bright idea to attempt steal a Key Stone to one of the Names of God- specifically, one of them sent a number of very stealthy probes to steal the Word Flame, Possesed by the god-king Incubus- and the entire structure imploded.
Every member of every ship in the other universe disappeared. Contact with the away teams ceased, and when an exploratory division arrived in the Core world, they found a single entity, in every single universe. It both filled the sky, and stood before them, paradoxically existing in only a way that exceptionally higher-dimensional beings could.
Then it spoke, and the brains of every lifeform within the universes that heard it died, torn to shreds in their skulls. Thankfully, the data was being streamed back to servers in a nearby (fairly empty) universe, so several AI's looked over the footage, and eventually translated the name of the being from the mass of data that had been collected.
The being called itself 'YISUN', and it banished them from it's worlds.
Every expedition, manned or unmanned, was obliterated after that. But, humanity, by this point, was willing to out-stubborn gods, so they just built a galaxy worth of fabrication platforms to produce unending streams of probes, each to deliver a message, and let them work.
Seven million, seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-seven years worth of near-constant probe destruction later, the entity YISUN stopped destroying probes. Humanity, who had scattered to chart the universes they could access, stopped what they were doing, and negotiations (insulated through several universes worth of relays and different forms of media) proceeded apace.
It took years, but eventually, the entity calling itself YISUN agreed, in exchange for the promise that it could use their knowlege gathered from outside itself to protect all within from other extra-YISUN travelers, to prevent any of the multitude of extra-universal entities from passing through.
See, YISUN was a, well, nearly unique entity in the multiverse, as far as it had been able to see. YISUN was cyclical, constantly in a state of existence, nonexistence, and rebirth, giving rise to the universes within itself on one side, having a series of gods and mortals develop, then eventually ending and dying, before reincarnating to rise again. Existing, constantly, in one state, stressed YISUN, who had never known a state other than constant birth, propagation, and death since it had come into being.
Humanity agreed, having not been idle these last 7,777,777 years. Having begun to map the absolutely infinite, many discoveries had been made. Souls were a thing, and they moved around in patterns that Humanity still had yet to learn by the Sixteenth Cycle. There was life out in the space between universes, and it was…. Strange. There were Parasites (soon to be named 'Stories'), Caretakers (the name for the beings that would become the 'Authors' or 'Editors', based on their interaction with the Stories), and the beings that were known to explorers as the Auditors (they named themselves)… And those were just the self-aware entities they could communicate with!
There were other entities out there in the darkness, but they were few and far between- and worse, many of them were only known because there were missing teams that just… Disconnected. Some of the teams were retroactively deleted from timestreams, and the remaining missing ones often just died in ways that could cause collateral damage dozens of universes away.
The Sixteenth Cycle ended with YISUN's division and return to it's own cycle of death a rebirth, and the collective mass of Humanity beyond the Circular Gate- only to find a wasteland of barren universes.
The Seventeenth Cycle was full of exploration- Humanity mapped out hundreds of Billions of permutations of slightly different universes, and refined their technology more, until EVERYTHING worked in every permutation they could find in the vast number of slightly-altered universes they could access behind the Gate. Moreover, the discoveries began to follow a pattern, where different laws were changing depending how far away from different universes that samples were taken… Well, they built a map.
Of sorts.
It was more of an equation- one that was, frankly obscenely long. But it meant that a person could measure a few universal constants, and get an idea of where in the multiverse they were relative to the Gate (and several other, predicted gates that were so far away that Humanity hadn't explored there yet).
The Eighteenth Cycle began when Human scientists and mathamaticians predicted there would be a universe, close to the dead zone, that had the right mix of variables for life AND would have 'magic', of a sort.
Humanity, as a whole, found their way across the vast gulfs between universes, and discovered that while they had been right about this universe being habitable, their ancient enemy appeared to be here as well.
They had found the XeeLee again.
Not nessesarily the original XeeLee, but a pale immitation. A small scout fleet- they were still building the gate out of any galaxies they could get a hold of, but now the XeeLee were both outclassed, and outnumbered by the now exceptionally old Humanity.
Striking with Vacuum-collapse warheads, Humanity destroyed the initial builders, but not all of the XeeLee were exterminated. The universal-invasion fleets of XeeLee Magnificance arrived, and Humanity was routed- intially. The titanic fleets of drones were obliterated, and the controllers hid in their own, still-forming, homeworld's moon.
With the XeeLee Fleets destroyed, Humanity waited. They sent out probes, designed to self-replicate, everywhere they could, to watch the worlds across all planets within the Local Group (of galaxies).
Millions of years passed, and Humanity watched as the first single-cellular organisms developed on their homeworld. Species they had seen before, and many they had not, developed across the stars, under the watchfull eyes of their hundreds of trillions of probes.
Of course, they only rarely intervened, but it was always (okay, almost always) done subtly. Except that one time they had to build a sun-shield to keep a planet from being sterilized by the unusually energetic host star, or the time that some of the Drone pilots decided to prevent a genocidal event by driving a drone at 3*c into the mothership of an assaulting armada between two species, or…
Fine- Humanity interfered. A Lot.
But the galaxies they watched over? By the time humans developed on the planet they had been orbiting for billions of years, they looked up at the stars and could see that they were not alone. 'Hello' messages from thousands of species rippled through the universe, and Earth heard that.
Then Humanity introduced themselves to Earth. Humanity brought humanity into space, and Humanity brought in their younger sibling to become part of the greater Humanity as fast as they could- Humanity was still afraid of the XeeLee, and while they had obliterated the first two fleets, they didn't know which of the infinite->Infinite multiplicity of universes that this specific fleet had come from, or if they had even more reenforcements.
Earth went from working with basic quantum chips to having seamless nanotech, AI, and FTL in less than 10 years.
After learning what the XeeLee did to universes, Humanity (old Humans and new humans) agreed to prepare the universe for the XeeLee- mainly, by uplifting the different species so that they would be able to help out in the future.
Humanity was too late for it to make a difference.
The XeeLee's greatest achievement was in being their own creators, through the paradoxical entity known as the Anti-XeeLee. It was a constant, one that the XeeLee's most precious construction was designed to spawn retrocausally, into any universe. ALL of their tech was designed to transmit the quantum waveform entity that was the Anti-XeeLee, and since they had arrived in this universe, the Anti-XeeLee was present… And had always been present.
It did as it always had, spawning the primordial XeeLee into the distant past, and uplifting them wherever possible. Now, small XeeLee forces arrived at a multitude of points from hundreds upon thousands of universes. Trickling through millions of tiny holes in the universe, the Fleet of XeeLee immediately began their work- emptying the universe of anything that might, in any way, allow the Photino Birds to reproduce, while building their way out again.
Humanity tried to fight them, as they always had, but a multitude of universes worth of XeeLee were invading, with more every second. After a century, they had increased the mass of the universe so much that inflation began slowing.
Humanity, for all their power, did not have the numbers to protect all life from the XeeLee process. Not anymore. While there were over 100 Trillion humans, and for every human there were multiple swarms of uncountable numbers of drones, all lead by Commanders… There were more XeeLee. More NightFighters.
Humantiy could only fight a delaying action. The XeeLee had learned from their last losses, and now they had a technological, and a numeric advantage.
So, while most of Humanity's forces were being used to feed the Galactic War Grinder, a small number of Humans spread out, and began getting most of the other species prepared for evacuation, and to add to the delaying action.
It worked- for a degree of 'worked'. Many species went extinct, as the edges of the front changed from galaxies. Entire galaxies of intelligent life vanished, as small battles were lost that escelated into massive destruction, as stars were broken and forced to supernovae.
Starbreakers could only be used by Humanity and their allies against the XeeLee Nightfighters. Mainly because the XeeLee didn't rely on Stars, or Planets. Each Nightfighter was a XeeLee in truth- they had become part of their own technology, and while they still needed a Ring to leave any universe, they were now battle-ready all the time.
Humanity hadn't needed a Gate to leave any universes for over a thousand years before the negotiations with YISUN began. Their understanding of the multiverse was great, and they used their primary weapon, the Tuning Forks (or Swords Against The Gods), to fight back, eventually leaving behind a destroyed, and desolate universe that rapidly began expanding again.
Only a few planets, dead and cold, survived their passage through this universe… And one single, absolutely insane and half-destroyed commander.
Now I knew what I had to do- and I had to tools to do it. In those 7,777,777 years, Humanity had discovered a LOT. The Dimensional Miners Assistants were sent out then, to explore the near-infinite universes. The discoveries of universes with laws so alien to our own at the very fabric of time and space was so hostile to anything that wasn't stabilizing the laws of the universe around themselves that probes would be instantly obliterated.
They learned that magic was, in fact, a thing- and the math of souls was a part of that. In fact, every universe had magic- it was actually what the Arrow Of Time was- it was the magic of the future passing through and changing the present.
They learned how to harness it, first through math and tech, then through their own minds.
Humanity became more, and created universes themselves- and in the end, continued that fight.
I had assimilated all this, and now... I had a lot of tech from the prime of Humanity. I could make Starbreakers- handguns that could destroy solar systems. I could do magic- in theory, anyway. Humanity never really investigated the magical methods- it was just too different to mass produce, and Humanity seemed to be a magical… Sink? Yes, like a black hole is a matter sink, for a lack of a better term.
Most references to magic were listed under 'NO. Just… Just No.' or equivalent. There was a brief mention of a splinter sect of Humanity having set out with their Dimensional Miner's Assistants and some other fragments of tech, setting out to look for a way around the metaphorical magic-sink effect that human souls tended to engender.
Of course, they had eventually succeeded, but it had taken a very, very long time.
Thankfully, my communications systems had self-repaired by then, and I had recorded the data- but that was hundreds of billions of years ago. Long enough that the Remnant Cache had activated, and partitioned everything as it did so.
My musings were interrupted as two of the multitude of extra-universal sensors pinged.
Three.
Eighty-five.
Thousands of pings.
Something was coming. I flashed a fabricator, and soon I had a new body. I had to warn Sarah- and we had to decide what to do.
-
Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades, Directing Mind of the Zerg, and Multiversal Traveler, was alone in her mind for the first time in HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF YEARS.
The silence was terrifying.
Sure, she could spawn the swarm again, but they would not be the same beings that she had known for all that time. The queens had devloped their own personalities- each Broodmother was unique. Abathur, the closest thing he had to a scientist, would never make anything new for the swarm.
Her Zerglings would never race as they had been doing in the dream. The Roaches she had known for eons would not dig ever again, or protect larva again. Her overlords would never fly again. Her Hydralisks would never climb, the Broodlords would never fly… The Swarm she had named, that she had directed, that she had let grow into greater prominence had been cut short.
The crushing lonelyness was getting to her, even after a few minutes.
The Queen of the Zerg slowly unclenched from the fetal position she was in, letting her wings extend out to click against the wall, Zerg exoskeleton barely scratching the advanced material, before pulling herself into a standing position in the microgravity.
She would need to either spawn the Swarm again, or learn to be alone. Or… Maybe give the Swarm to others. Atmosphere flooded into the now-airtight chamber, and she had to exert a minute effort to lower herself to the ground.
The Swarm would not be destroyed without a fight.
"Feeling better?" The voice purred from behind her.
Sarah spun around, fingertips and wingtips glowing purple before she stopped herself. "I could have…. No. No I am not feeling better." She took a deep breath. "I will grieve later. Why are you here, MetalMind?"
"Something is coming." A hologram appeared, and an image of golden filaments, the depth of the hologram somehow making her two eyes (so limited!!!) want to twist, reaching out and slipping around strange blue-purple-green orbs in the darkness. "I think whatever caught up to us, has found us again."
"What is coming?" Sarah asked as she looked at the limited projection of multidimensional data. I noticed that she had been crying, but I thought it best not to comment on it.
"My creators called it an Author- sort of like a god." I explained. "These things control, well, a lot of things, but the salient point is that one is hunting us down. They don't like it when extradimensional entities try to alter timelines." I animated the shape, and showed how it skated along different lines in multidimensional space. "I am fairly certain that this animated and modified the corpse of a Xel'Naga, the thing that forced us away from that last universe."
"… Alright…" Sarah glanced at the face of my avatar, and rolled her eyes. "I have no clue how to deal with this! I never had to deal with an enemy on this sort of scale! Why are you even telling me?"
I had to force my avatar to blink. "Why not? If I don't, then I will only have my own judgement."
Sarah just gave me a look.
"In addition, I would rather not be solely responsible for both our deaths."
That got her to nod, then chuckle slightly. "I wouldn't want to be solely responsible for both our deaths either." The queen of the zerg chuckled slightly, then interlaced her fingers. "But you just want to spread out any blame WHEN we die then?"
"Yup!" I smirked (great- the emotional simulation and drivers work just fine). "But seriously though, there are two ways I can probably deal with the Author."
Sarah blinked and restrained a twitch unsuccessfully. "It almost sounds like we're in a story. Like some badly-written novel or fanfiction."
I paused, and looked at the wall of the small chamber within the Cuttleship I had used to evacuate from that last universe. "No… I only see three walls. No fourth wall to worry about." I began to project the current generation of the map equation based on the detected physical constants.
A starfield of hundreds of sparks appeared. This multiversal map didn't show all possible universes- it would be impossible to simulate that. Rather, it highlighted 'significant' levels of deviation between basic rules that caused visible deviations on the Mortal (visible to the human eye) scale, and the average centerpoint of each zone that had similar Mortal-Scale effects.
It was a very simple form of the map, as technically all universal variations were infinite, but it did have lines that indicated overlap points, so… That was useful.
For a 3-D map, it was doing a fairly good job of conveying relative position of higher-dimensional-space.
Still sucked as a matter of principle though.
One of the dots blinked. "We are here." Specifically, in a significant cluster of dots beyond the tiny red ring that represented the Gate. "This was our experienced path." A series of green lines highlighted my path, jumping from world-to-world even as it curved entirely around the Gate in question. "And the Entity, the Author has been seen moving in this path so far…" I charted out a red line through the universes, on the heels of the green line. "And to put this in perspective, I met you here." Another dot changed color, now yellow.
Sarah traced the pathways with her eyes, and blinked. "Are you sure?" I understood her confusion- the path of universes I, we, had taken, was rather… Erratic, with significant distances between the different stops.
"Yes." I twisted the map, orienting a different higher-dimensional axis set to line up with the 3D projection. "There is not really distance, as in there is no real space between the different universes here, but there is a high-energy spacial 'effect', called the Firmament, where all possible past and future energy densities exist. There is a sort-of-distance that we traversed through, but in terms of distance in physical space, there is none." It was much, much more complicated than that really, but language had no terms for this stuff, and the easiest and most coherent way to explain it was with obscure mathematics.
Sarah's brow furrowed. "And you have a defense that can hold off this sort of entity permanently?"
"The Tuning Forks can defend against it, but that takes time to establish." I flicked the map over to our current location, and enlarged it, showing the distribution of tuning forks. "But…. I can also cause worse effects other than stabilizing the laws of physics or preventing exo-universal entities from exerting their power."
"You think you can hurt that… Thing." It wasn't a question. "Kill it?"
"Maybe…. I can at least trap it." I returned the projection to the multiversal map, and highlighted an area. "There are probably a set of empty universes here- as in, way, way post-heat-death universes with minimal quantum fluctuations. Let me check…" A moment's thought set the fabrication of probes in their hundreds, each equipped with the fastest variation of FTL drives I had, as well as cloaking systems and enough sensors to be able to see hundreds of thousands light-years in real-time.
Bullshit future tech is bullshit.
Hundreds of probes began shooting through portals towards the evacuation point, and I nodded as the data began streaming back. One of the bits in the last Remnant Cache was a multi-universe transmitter/receiver setup. It wasn't good enough for more than burst-transmission, which meant I couldn't run instances of myself in multiple universes at once (I required hundreds of billions of times more bandwidth to maintain my consciousness and continuity of thought), but I could give pre-set conditions and have the probes report which universes they were passing through.
And, of course, I showed my mapping efforts in the form of a swarm of yellow dots. It took a few minutes, but I eventually had enough data to chart an ideal path between my current position, and the resulting pathway became highlighted.
"We will need to pass through 17 universes, but only 5 of them have inhabitants." I set the map to highlight those universes. "And we will be riding along the path charted out by a story's Archetype- specifically, 'The Chosen One' and 'The Quest'."
Sarah gave me another look. "I'll assume that makes sense to you. I assume I will be coming along?"
"Unless you want to stay here-"
"NO!" Sarah jumped at me, and I could see the desperation. "No! I am the only organic mind here- and I just…." She dragged her claws down my armored plates, even as I reached out to hold her up. "I need my swarm again!"
I could not resist those glowing purple orbs. Yes, I had dogs as a human- and three younger siblings, all of which were skilled with the begging eyes. But there are even some levels of begging that even I could not resist.
Plus, while I could not understand entirely how she must feel right now, I can imagine it.
"Come, and I will show you a place for them." I began to tow her out of the bowls of my Cuttle-ship, and set my swarm to constructing a dedicated vessel for the Zerg.
-
Three hours later, and two universes away from Fortress, in the Warhammer: Total War Universe…
Melvin, the blacksmith and now sorcerer (because being a blacksmith made you qualified for that somehow?!?) for the Warriors of Chaos was cleaning his helmet after the last skirmish with one of the more… Resistant bands of Savage Chaos-Worshiping Tribes. He had gotten some organ-juices in one of the holes, and it had begun to smell.
He did not like that. At all. To the point where he had summoned a daemon just to get some daemonic cleaning products from Tzeench- and then he sent said daemon back because it could not stop laughing.
No matter- he, Melvin, Sorcerer of Tzeench and Warrior of Chaos, would clean his helmet!
The battle had been hours ago, and now, Melvin scrubbed his helmet under the starlight, as campfires crackled merrily in the night, and hundreds of other Warriors celebrated the win of their battle in the most stereotypical fashion- punching puppies, eating their slain foes, and just reveling in the, well, chaos of it all.
Melvin was glad to be away from the rest of the horde- he was a vegetarian, and had packed his own food. Garlic Bread was now his favorite food, as it pushed away the smell of human fluids… A little.
He hadn't even killed anyone! He had just been splashed with the fluids from when another Warrior of Chaos had bisected some guy!
There was a flicker above his head, and Melvin looked up, his jaw dropping. Something was moving at a decent clip among the stars, reflecting light like the moon, and then, with another flash, it disappeared.
Melvin had no idea what he had just seen, but with it's appearance and sudden disappearance, he had felt some part of his mind change- just as a drum beat began to echo over the night.
He turned to the nearest campfire, and saw one of his contemporaries manifesting through the pork-smelling fire (having been fueled with human corpses).
"Archaon the Everchosen, Ruler of the Warriror of Chaos, and Champion of the Chaos Gods, has died!" Morosly stated the figure in the fire. "He died of constipation earlier today on the field, after feasting on his enemies." You could almost hear the derision of that last statement.
Melvin could see the bewilderment on the faces of the other Warriors of Chaos within range. Even he was a bit… Confused? Yes, confused. How does The Everchosen die of constipation?
Well… I guess it would make sense if he kept eating the bodies raw. Melvin mused to himself. He had seen warriors, sorry, Warriors of Chaos (they were so touchy about that) die after eating raw human, so it might be possible.
"That is all." The figure in the flame disappeared.
Three seconds later, ironically, chaos erupted among the Warriors of Chaos.
Rico Rodriguez, Ex-Agent and bringer of explosions (hobbiest saviour as the people of Medici NEVER PAID HIM), was enjoying the night air as he wingsuited to one of the marked stunt locations on his map.
"How did Garland even get a drone camera up there…" He muttered to himself, even as a grapple shot out and anchored him to a mountain peak, allowing momentum (plus the bavarium-powered motor in his grapple-launcher) to slingshot him further up into the air to get a bead on the linked holographic rings.
It was… Strange, he supposed. Garland, the movie director, somehow managed to set up dozens and dozens of drone cameras in various locations around the island, but had only hired stuntmen who were compitant at fighting scenes, so all of these stunts had gone undone until he had come along.
How did she even get the money? And wouldn't Tom Cruise, that crazy civilian, be willing to do most of these stunts at discount?
Actually… Rico completed the ring set, skimming the water of a high-lake and seconds later he saw the drone lifting off, even as a call buzzed in on his earpiece.
"Incoming call: G. King." Stated the automatic system.
"Answer." He replied.
"Nice shot- though, did you need to skim that tree on the second ring?" Garland's New York/Brookland accent hummed over the line. "Anyway, go get some other-"
"Garland?" Rico interrupted. "How did you get all these drones out here?"
"The cam-drones?" The movie director (techically dead, as one of the first things he had helped the American with was a little stunt that would allow here to fake her own death) asked, as if the thought that someone would want to know where she got her fleet of camera drones would never be brought up. "Oh, I bought them off some startup a year or so back. Super-stable, with sound-detection systems around their own turbines and cancelation software that automatically filtered out all interference from their own propulsion- It was a steal kid! See, the startup that built the drones and design initially wanted to, well, use them for car chases and such, but the Hollywood movie market didn't need that functionality. Here though, in Solis, with all the stunt possibilities and limitations on wiring the environment for mikes and so-on (Espanoza's permits and such), I was able to easily see an effective use. Once your 'Army of Chaos' finishes doing, well, whatever it's doing (I'm thinking take over the island- yes or no?) I can make a documentary of how your army liberated the people and the good work democracy does such a cause!"
There was a mutter on her end for a moment, but all he could hear was 'Trump' and 'agenda' and 'political bullshit' for a moment, before he realized that she had stopped talking, but was still on the line.
"That makes sense." He snapped out another grapple, just barely missing a pair of trees, and accelerated between them out over a cliff. "Thanks for telling me."
"No problem doll!" Chirped the director. "Speaking of dolls, you gotta come in and meet with the product team some time- we have a line of accessories we want to add for the 'Rico Rodriguez Excessive Action' Figure! Matel is going to make us a FUCKING MINT!"
"Excessive action figure?" Rico mused to himself. "Hmmm…. I can't see it." His AR-lense lit up and highlighted a nearby spy blimp. "Hang on a second, I need to blow up a surveillance blimp." A high flat spot within 500 meters of the blimp would be needed for the drop…
There!
Rico angled down, pulling up on the last second and flaring the airbrake in his wings before stumbling to a landing on the cliff's edge. A couple button presses, and an airdropped package would be on it's way- bringing some more ammo for his current heavy loadout.
The Ex-Agency Ex-Agent pulled the prototype Railgun from his back, and sighted on the blimp.
"Is it a blimp, or a dir-rigible?" He mused. "I always get those two mixed up."
"Those are just airships. Armored ones though- Bavarium-nanospray plating I think."
Rico almost twitched as he heard the director in his ear, and checked his aim as the railgun's capacitors continued to charge. "Really? I could use some of that."
"Well, tell your lady-friend that her minions should pick up some of the parts." Garland suggested. Then, slightly muffled, she yelled out at some third party. "Don't drop the frogs! If you do, I'm taking the cost of the tank out of your pay, AND I'm making you chase them down, PERSONALLY!"
"Heh." Rico chuckled once, then fired. The fully-charged railgun shot lanced out with a sound like thunder, snapping out at the airship, and punching into the port engine block, causing the lighter-than-air craft to abruptly list, a ripple of distortion passing over the vessel as, while the panels were nearly invulnerable, the rest of the vessel wasn't as sturdy, and internal structures snapped, opening tiny gaps in the airship's gasbag, which ignited- not causing an explosion yet, the vessel was too-well designed for that, but still doomed.
He reloaded the railgun, his wrist-mounted computer/smartphone picking up radio chatter as the vessel reported that it was under fire. "And that is why I don't have minions. Mira Morales is the one who wanted the army."
"Ooooohhhh... Trouble in paradise then? You and the shapely Mira on the couch? Actually, which one of you would have the will to keep the bed in that case?" Garland sounded incredibly interested in the subject.
Rico took aim, and began to charge the next shot. "We're not. She's got a… Thing with Sheldon."
"Tom Sheldon? The Texan?" Garland King sounded either appalled or intrigued. Possibly both. "You can't be serious!"
He released the trigger, and the railgun spoke again, snapping out over the mountains as the shell punched through the entire airship, causing a catastrophic explosion that obliterated most of the airship. "His transponder was reporting from Mira's apartment a few days ago."
"No08wuey347138429340909989*)^^%()&*@^E)...." His communicator filled with static as a titanic shape suddenly appeared in the night, reflecting like moonlight but much, much larger than the moon appeared in the sky.
"What the…." After a few seconds, the structure flashed with purple-green light, and somehow seemed to stretch in all directions before vanishing in a way that made his mind think of the sound forp.
Then he looked down at his wrist-computer, and frowned, as it was just now finishing downloading a file from somewhere. It froze for a moment, then continued working as if nothing had ever happened.
Rico sighed. "Shit." He looked over the map, and placed a request in to meet with Mira before requesting a quick drop of one of the multitude of Microjets that the Army of Chaos had purloined- even as the crate from his previous order landed behind him.
He missed seeing the flash of endless eyes and tentacles that erupted and vanished into the night in a fraction of a second.
Rico buisied himself with checking the railgun and stowing the delivered ammo as his small aircraft was delivered.
He needed access to some of the Rebellion's computers to see what was added to his wrist-computer, and since Mira didn't really trust him, he would need to use her pet hacker.
-
"So… What is it?"
Izzy, Mira's pet hacker, looked up at him over her screen. "Not sure."
Rico raised an eyebrow.
The hacker sighed. "It's not malware, it's not any sort of computer attack, and it's the only remnant of extraterrestrial interaction with humanity we have, as a whole, seen. So by rights, I should't even be looking at this."
"Aliens are real! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" Caeser, the rather-crazy conspiracy theorist, pilot, mechanic, and builder of the Stormchaser chanted from across the room. "I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy! Ahahahahaha!"
"Yeah…" Izzy frowned. "But it's more than just that. This package is like… A notepad file, with instructions in how to 'unpack' a small part of it using, if I am reading this right, a semi-infinite fractal decompression algorithm. That's only a theory at this point- and when I say 'only a theory', I mean 'only a theory that even mathematicians can't get to work completely right' sort of theory."
"More importantly, can we decode it?" Mira sashayed up (the only way to walk when you look that good), and looked over Izzy's shoulder. "I have a couple spare computers we can use that are separated from the network."
"We are going to need more than that." Izzy began scrolling, reading down the instructions. "Interestingly, the compression isn't infinite- just very, very large. According to this, it seems to be limiting to expanding to several hundred terabytes for the first round of unpacking."
"Several hundred…." Rico muttered. "That's a single gigabyte-sized file!"
"I said semi-infinite." Glared the hacker. "It's not infinite. But there are seven layers of unpacking, as far as I can tell."
Mira rubbed her temples and groaned. "This is going to be a logistical nightmare."
"Not really." Everyone turned to Rico. "We have taken over a number of facilities with excess computer equipment. I can just fly around with a heavy cargo helicopter to collect the parts, then bring the parts here." He pointed at Mira. "You can find a location we can assemble the servers, and send out the call for computer specialists." He pointed at Izzy. "You can organize and head the team of programmers. Whatever is in that file might be incredibly valuable- and I will split the proceeds or benefits with the Army of Chaos… Fifty-fifty. Sound like a deal?"
Izzy nodded, eyes lighting up as she thought about the value such a project might have.
Mira gaped at him. "What do you mean fifty-fifty?!"
"Mira… I am not a rebel." Rico patted her shoulder. "I understand why you wanted to create the Army of Chaos, and I understand… But I do not have anything else to my name other than his grappler, my clothes, my parachute, a wingsuit, and some petty cash. What are you going to do when the rebellion is over?"
Mira Morales, leader of the Army of Chaos, had no answer for him.
"Think about it." Rico began typing on his wrist-computer, calling up Sheldon. "Hey Sheldon, I've got a question for you about logistics…"
-