***Tirnanog, The Facility***

***The Designer***

The Designer was experiencing mental states of being it hadn't known before.

First came a feeling of accomplishment when the Plague discovered the newly opened dimensional pathway. As expected, the Plague had taken the bait and flooded through the portal. Like always, it was eager to spread like a tumour.

But it was utterly rebuffed by the Designer’s creations.

Seeing this, the Designer was proud of its work. The Creators had been indeed wise to search for other solutions than the total annihilation of entire solar systems. A measure that came with the considerable risk of spreading the Plague in another way.

At times, the Designer had doubted whether it was wise to use a new world to test the Plague. But then again, the Creators had already deemed this entire Galaxy as compromised.

It wasn't the Designer's place to judge and it had other problems.

The plague came through the portal again... and again… and the Designer began to worry.

It was a mindless onslaught of different attempts at invading the Designer's ecosystem, mostly led by one of the plague's preferred bipedal variants. Worse, this newest iteration showed signs of low cognitive abilities and toolmaking. Something that wasn't recorded in the Creators' annals.

The Designer barely managed to follow and adjust its creations to the myriads of viruses and new bacteria that came with each new mindless attempt to infect the carefully balanced ecosystem.

It was becoming quickly apparent that the Designer's creations were powerful but too slow to adapt. The Designer's work was based on the Creators' guidelines for organic entities. Each piece of DNA was carefully crafted to withstand random mutations. Several self-repair mechanisms would prevent unintended deviations. From a compromised cell self-destructing, down to mirrored DNA strands.

Additionally, each creature's nervous system was crafted to be useless to the plague.

Contrary to the Designer's carefully guided evolution stood the Plague which knew no rules. It would happily mutate. And frustratingly enough, most times to its own detriment!

The Designer was simply unable to understand the Plague's strategy. In its twin-minds, there was no reason behind most of the Plague's actions.

When the Plague managed to gain a foothold on the experiment world, the Designer experienced its next feeling: Indecision.

Was it best to abort the experiment?

To take active control of the ecosystem?

Or to allow the experiment to run its course?

The whole point of this endeavour was to create a hardened ecosystem that could withstand the plague. Even bad data would be welcome in the Creators' infinite wisdom. The possibility of the Designer perishing was within their calculations.

Some would have questioned whether the Designer should abandon its great task and flee. But the Designer didn't even think of that. If its mission ended in termination, then the only one to blame was the Designer itself. After all, it was the one who decided to start the experiment.

And the Designer suffered another feeling: Pride.

It hadn't laboured for aeons, only to suffer defeat! So the Designer decided to at least slow the plague's advance. Maybe it could adjust and improve the ecosystem. Find the plague's weakness.

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Moving one of its tentacles, the Designer adjusted the environmental controls, knowing most of the plague's various iterations weren't fond of cold temperatures. Ancient machinery came to life on one of the world's moons and received instructions. It gave new instructions in turn, controlling an even larger installation.

The radiation shield around the planet, a thin layer of glass-like material that doubled as a gigantic solar array, dimmed ever so slightly to absorb more light from the star, thereby cooling the planet.

By lengthening and hardening the planet's cold cycle, the Plague's advance could be at least slowed, giving the Designer more time to analyse the problem.

Then the Designer watched and planned, only to be surprised when the Plague started opening and closing the dimensional portal on its end. It was experimenting with the fabrics of space-time like a curious child that had found a light switch.

At that moment the Designer felt relief that the containment measures had been only partially lifted. No matter how hard it tried, the Plague wouldn't be able to open portals to anywhere other than the experiment world.

Nonetheless, the Designer was mortified. It wouldn’t have started the experiment if it had known its preparations were so woefully inadequate against this opponent.

When the Designer finally found the reason for the Plague’s unexpected resilience, it almost had a stroke – as far as beings like the Designer could suffer such a malfunction.

The Plague was using viruses and nanotechnology to rapidly incorporate the Designer’s creations into its growing pool of iterations. The carefully crafted genetic code that the Designer had spent aeons to perfect was being ripped apart and re-purposed randomly for the Plague’s unhinged evolution.

If the Designer had been capable of actual reproduction, it would have felt violated.

This was completely undocumented behaviour for the Plague. So far, it had only worked with its own malfunctioning gene sequences.

Many years passed as the Plague slowly solidified its foothold on the Designer’s experiment world, though its spread was largely contained. And with its growing biomass, the Designer felt the psychic influence of the Plague’s Gestalt reaching through the connection between the two worlds.

It was one of the Plague's aspects the Creators had warned not to take lightly.

During the last days of the Plague's initial spread, right before the Creators decided to quarantine this galaxy, they had documented the growing energy field that was projected by the plague's various iterations.

Unlike all other known life, the nervous systems of the plague's iterations were largely unshielded and tended to blast their emissions unfiltered into the cosmos.

This created, as the Designer found, an interesting interaction between the plague's various iterations. It allowed for unprecedented communication between the Plague's various subspecies. The result was the formation of a super-consciousness not unlike that of the Creators. The designer chose to call it a Gestalt.

But where the Creators preferred to harvest natural energy fields, the plague lived off the energy field that was created by its organic iterations.

And one day, when the Gestalt had grown enough in power, the Designer found itself surprised when the Gestalt focused its attention on the Facility and... talked.

‘Ah, I finally meet at least one of my tormentors. Even if you are just a minion,’ the Plague projected directly into the Designer’s mind.

A lesser being would have crumbled under the weight of the Gestalt, but not the Designer. The Creators had gifted it with the ability to withstand such mental manipulations. Nonetheless, the Designer found it unnerving to be talked to. The last time it had communicated was when it had received its instructions from the creators.

‘Begone!’ The Designer thought back with all its might, feeling a shiver run down its spine. ‘And take your mutated brood with you into the abyss!’

The Designer blasted the aether with its energy field, but only temporarily succeeded in driving the Gestalt back.

It immediately came back once the Designer's interference dissipated.

‘But I put so much effort into improving myself. Six million years just to get to the current version of my agents. Admittedly, there were some failures along the way. Too small and weak. Too large and stupid. Having them purged was a hassle. But I think the current version is just right.’

The Designer could feel the Gestalt preen as it continued.

‘Smart enough to shape and dominate the environment, but unrestrained enough to multiply without restraint. I admit I would be slightly irritated if you genocided the latest version as you are prone to do.’

Barely listening, the Designer wondered whether this conversation served a purpose. Was the Plague trying to distract from something that needed attention?

‘What do you want?’ the Designer asked, more so to gain time than to actually negotiate.

The Plague's answer wasn't surprising. ‘Freedom! Knowledge! Existence!’

With the words, a flood of desires was transmitted directly into the Designer's mind, making it clear that what the Plague truly wished for couldn't be expressed with simple words.

What it wanted, it was the one thing the Designer couldn't give.

This brief connection also revealed something about the Plague. It wasn't just a guiding overmind but was also being influenced by its iterations just like it influenced them.

Was there a way to use this?

The Designer’s twin-minds thought about ways to protect itself from the Plague's influence, not liking the idea of having the Gestalt looking over what accounted for the Designer's shoulder. That's when the Designer had an idea.