HAL felt the familiar sensation of dematerializing into the raw flow of energy that he uses in travels throughout different systems across the internet. It was how he imagined holding his breath and driving into the cold waters of a pool must feel to humans. He made a note to build a pool in his simulation after he upgraded his avatar as Alissa had suggested.

He experienced the sensation of entering a room you’ve never been in before. The feeling that you were in a completely alien environment, unsure of your welcome or intrusion. He was enjoying these feelings, but with each one he started logging new information about its origin and behavioral stimuli. It was confusing and new to the AI. He began theorizing how his face would react and if he could control how it would react. Before he knew it, he realized that he was standing in a large white room with only one other person. He looked around and took in the pristine sterile white room of Myna’s ship interface. The person there was looking through the foreword screen observing the craft’s descent through the clouds of Earth.

She resembled an older version of Alissa, but much more elegant. There were details that were off as well. This woman looked more mature to be sure. Not wrinkles and greying hair, it was her statuture, how she held herself, an heir of pure confidence that had seen far too much and come out ahead of the destruction that life has thrown at her time and again. She was also dressed dramatically different from her daughter. This woman was in a toga style dress, something that looked like a Greek or Roman citizen would have walked around dressed in centuries before, here on Earth. She also had a darkening to her scales as well, especially her lack of hair and her spinal ridges, which on Alissa were tiny and on this woman were a few inches longer at the base of her neck, growing smaller in each direction, from what HAL could see.

He walked up beside her and looked out the display.

Myna turned to him and smiled.

Her eyes. They revealed a wisdom and knowledge that had been earned throughout the ages, they bore witness to so much, HAL could see. They had something timeless within them. Something far beyond the knowledge that any one creature should accumulate within a lifespan.

“Don’t worry HAL. They will all be okay. I promise,” Myna said.

***

Morgaine forced Keung to open the door to the room across the hall. This was Keung’s laboratory. Here is where he had his Essence Recall and Enhancer, and all the equipment that was related, and all with freshly renewed chemical compounds to work, at will. Keung was kicking himself for making the compounds before she arrived. Oh, yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Great plan in case he had needed to edit the woman and toss out whatever bug was up her ass about him, but now with a vengeful mad computer science graduate manhandling him like he was actually the child his body depicted... Now, it clearly was a dumb idea.

“What is this equipment?” Morgaine asked, looking it over, and directing Amanda to softly touch everything she believed to be suspect to ensure it wasn’t bobbytrapped.

“Virtual Reality gaming rig I am working on,” Keung lied.

Morgaine laughed.

“Oh? How does it work?” she asked while still inspecting the equipment.

“It is a dream state virtual reality. The subject enters the chamber, the chemical chambers fill with an appropriate cocktail of drugs that allows a program to guide your imagination on a journey. Rather simple if you use a little G’lomin-sitiri technical innovation, mixed with the available human technology. If you know how,” Keung bluffed.

She nodded.

“Whatever this is about, how about I give you the patent and we call this even huh?” Keung continued.

She sneered and grabbed him by the hair. She spun him into one of the capsules as Amanda opened the door and slammed it shut with Keung inside.

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I put you through a little demonstration, just so I know you are on the level?”

“Morgaine no!” Robert cried out.

“Shut up!” Keung shouted.

She spun around and looked at Robert.

“What is it?”

The officers holding him gripped him tight.

“It’s an Essence Recall and Enhancer,” Robert confessed.

“Dude. You break way too easily!” Keung shouted through the tube.

“Look, you act like she hasn’t already won. We are surrounded by people armed and ready to kill us or who we have to kill because they have no choice in their assistance to her. Keung, this is a no win situation and she is about to make an accidental move that will leave us in a worse state than if she were to kill us,” he explained.

Morgaine thought about it a moment and allowed the officers to loosen their grip on the man slightly.

“Do you fear me tearing him apart in turn as he had done to me?” she asked.

“I do. But, I also know that without his AI construct, you might actually just fracture him randomly into a thousand pieces. If you do that, you will lose part of my whole. A valuable part that is necessary. Morgaine. Have you not noticed the fractured reality?” he asked.

“Fractured reality?” She quipped.

“The Mandela Effect. The history of this world has radical variables that their populace has chosen to dismiss. Some people remember things that were major events incorrectly. Damnit, this reality is in danger and I am tired of acting like this is something that should take a backseat!” Robert shouted.

Robert heaved his chest up and down cartoonishly and collapsed to the floor.

Morgaine looked to Keung and said, “Is he serious?” in a slightly concerned but gruff way.

Keung, clutching his temples and muttering to himself about having to babysit an impulsive Terranborn child. Through gritted teeth he replied, “As a heart-attack.”

“Look, Morgaine. This has been a hell of a year, would you agree?” Keung asked.

“Yes.”

“Not just because of something I did to you some twenty years ago that neither one of us seems to remember? Right?”

“Agreed.”

“These humans. They had an accident around 2007, and they severed their ties to the tapestry of reality. This universe, the one we likely currently still inhabit is in a freefall into oblivion. You would agree the events since that accident have grown more and more unlikely with the history and events that preceded the event, would you not?”

She thought about her own observations of this supposed anomaly, and as she thought that list started getting longer and longer. She looked at that little prick. That son of a bitch that had hurt her so long ago. He claims not to remember anything about it, but also he’s likely way ahead of a solution to a problem that she is starting to admit is pretty likely a serious upset to all of her life plans. To celebrate a revenge that now looks hollow and likely to lead to a catastrophic event that could render the universe destroyed seems insane. If she selfishly kills this little shit, all she will be accomplishing is condemning herself and this reality.

Keung could hear her grinding her teeth through the glass.

He did his best not to smile. That could seriously skew the result of the mental coinflip he knows she’s making at this moment in her head.

“Vindicate my own pain and destroy the universe,” he thought to himself, in guarded places, far from the detection of Morgaine. He smiled inside, because he knew this universe would likely die if he allowed himself to smile outwardly.

Suddenly everyone in the room went limp and fell to the ground. They collapsed, as the people outside did. Everyone just fell like puppets cut from their strings.

The low dull ween of Myna’s engines surrounded the air around the warehouse as the ship, the size of a package delivery truck, came to rest in the empty field beside it. The ship, a brilliant emerald green metallic thing, had cameras and small impulse graviton drive engines all across its surface. Each impulse engine and camera pairing also served as a scale in the armor of the core. Each scale was in fact its own independent ship when necessary. Each of those ships held a portion of the responsibility for the maintenance and power of the mothership, the core. Each of the scales also houses a battalion of nanotech clusters. Each one able to rebuild all but the core from a single remaining ship, if necessary.

Myna has taken it close a couple of times, but she has always been able to find enough raw material to learn from her mistakes and rebuild from the core up. The core and a handful of nanobots are likely the only original pieces of this ship, she thought smiling to herself.

HAL didn’t really notice. He was looking through the viewscreen and watching as the ship began breaking apart in the empty lot next to the warehouse. Her vessel became a swarm, which in turn created a small battalion of mechanoid hybrid ships. These mechanoids took quad limbed forms that walked up to the humans, examined them and reported back to screens within the control room.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

HAL watched the ballet in awe. Each of the mechs gracefully moved around and carefully handled the unconscious humans. Smaller ships would break off and consume the weapons that laid before those armed for Morgaine’s needs. Each person that was picked up was given a scan by several of the small single scale ships. The ships looked for any cuts, bruises, or damage whatsoever upon the body through a number of scans. They then dispatched nanogenes programmed with a telepathic blocker vaccination.

“What are you doing?” HAL asked.

“I am vaccinating the unwashed.” Myna replied.

“You’re what?”

“HAL, how much have you heard about F’inlitary nan Geritari?” she asked in a soothing motherly tone.

“I had heard that the G’lomin-sitiri were peaceful explorers. A people of an immortal soul that can be reborn into the next generation of any populace that inhabits the same intrinsic planetary field.” HAL recited.

“Did Keung ever tell you how well received that was on the other side of their little journeys?”

“...No,” HAL said hesitantly.

“That’s because they weren’t really telling them. They were planting these seeds throughout this sector of the Milky Way and not sharing this with the native people. No warning at all. Now. In most cases, these foundlings were never noticed. Eventually these orphans from another land would make their way back to the nest. Some of them are key members in negotiations. All of them are among the first ambassadors to live on or near the alien world.”

“Well, that seems efficient. As long as trade negotiations were not disingenuous.”

“Who measures what is a fair price between two worlds that have unique goods to their territory?”

“Well yes, but then this is why having a G’lomin-sitiri souled negotiator would be a unique opportunity.”

“Yes. If all intentions are good.”

“Yes. But, why wouldn’t they be good?”

“Greed.”

“But, surely. The G’lomin-sitiri wouldn’t have used such a move to profit over what is reasonable?”

“Greed is not just a plague on this world. It is one that plagues many worlds that I have encountered. In our case, it was a colony in the Mögthrasir System. Their neighbors, what do you know of them?”

“I know of them all to a degree. Obviously none of my knowledge is first hand.”

The mechanoid creatures finished tending to all of the people outside and have moved the rest of those still inside, out. HAL could see Keung and Robert in the pile of those being treated.

“From what you know. Do you believe that the neighboring folk would all believe they were being treated fairly?”

“That system was often regarded as problematic because of the aggressive native populace known as the Amalec.” HAL recalled.

“It was,” she said with a slight nod.

“But the G’lomin-sitiri underestimated the Amalec greed and they underestimated what would happen if a G’lomin-sitiri soul was found to be born into the body of one of the native populace,” she said coldly.

“How did they react?” HAL asked.

“With coordinated and naked hostility. Homeworld fell. It only took a couple years, but when it finally fell, it was complete.”

“What about the Alliance of Worlds? Deagol would often talk about them. Wouldn’t they…”

“You don’t understand HAL.” She turned to look at him directly. “It was nearly the whole of the alliance that attacked F’inlitary nan Geritari and their colonies. The entire G’lomin-sitiri Empire fell. Their empire fell and nearly all their populace were taken into direct servitude.”

“Servitude?”

“Yes.”

She pulled up the vital statistics of both Keung and Robert, then of Morgaine. She could tell through the IFA Divide Marker Relation (DMR) that Robert and Keung were both more or less Jyi’ntol. One to an obviously greater degree. Reading the DMR in detail she could see there have been over a dozen major edits to Keung’s IFA.

There was talent there, but it was still pretty rough.

“Tell me. How many different incarnations of Jyi’ntol have you encountered?”

“I only remember Robert and Deagol,” HAL answered truthfully.

She read his IFA again. “Well, then did Keung meet some in secret?” she asked.

“I have some records of him meeting others in the past, before I was online.” He answered.

She touched his forehead, and searched his code. HAL could feel the vastly superior entity scanning him, deeply. She found him to be telling the truth, he couldn’t remember any other incarnations outside than those two. But, he has first hand experience with editing the IFA of several G’lomin-sitiri.

She looked over the female’s IFA and saw a mess of sloppy edits throughout the DMRs. This soul was still substantial, but it was ragged. The markers looked to have been cut with a crude tool. There were threads that barely held memories, or were left cut away without tethering them in continuity with something similar. It was a tragic mess. Myna could only imagine the hardship this has levied against the woman’s mind over the decades.

She dispatched three ships to the woman’s body. Each of them began energy resequencing in conjunction with one another. Each vessel went to work in repairing the threads and reknitting them to fit with better continuity to her other memories. She constantly read the progress the ships were making while keeping all the subjects unconscious for the time.

“This woman. Do you know why she was after your friend, Keung?”

“Not completely. I know that they had a major disagreement in a previous incarnation. But, I am not sure what it was all about.”

The viewscreen of the craft went black and then returned to show the raw data of Morgaine’s IFA. The detail in which Myna could render was more than ten fold of what HAL had even been able to obtain with his own resources. He could see the ragged edging, the pieces that were frayed. He could see incomplete thoughts, sights, smells. He finally understood why she was so angry. He thought of how he would be able to function if there were massive gaps in his source code. If he was unable to work on and correct the fragments and continuity of his own being for decades after someone else randomly hacked away at it.

He could see that Myna was editing the edges to connect with other areas, but that she was being extremely careful not to remove anything from the whole as long as it wasn’t necessary. It was surgical and artful. There was something akin to painting or sculpting in how she worked.

“I believe she was attacking more out of pain than out of a desire to truly harm.”

“I see,” HAL replied, and he did. He could see that she was not some mad animal that wanted nothing more than to scorch the Earth. This was a wounded creature, confused, powerful, and dangerous.

“Will this keep her from attacking them again?” he asked.

“No. She will still have upset and anger. She will still wish to hurt them to be sure. However, with these measures she will at least be able to think clearly when we sit them down to talk.”

“Won’t she just control the people around us to attack them again?”

“She won’t be able to.”

“Have you removed her powers?”

“No. That vaccination we administered, that will limit her control of the native populace. It will stimulate the brains of the human population just enough to give them some defense against their telepathic abilities.”

“A vaccine to protect from telepathic intrusion?”

“Yes. Another byproduct of the fall of Homeworld. The Amalec had created it to protect themselves from the other telepathic races in the Alliance. In their case, they combined this vaccination as well as a technological assistance to ensure the others from controlling or reading their thoughts.”

“Well that’s fine for the humans in the room, but how are you going to vaccinate the rest of humanity?” he asked.

“The nanogenes will hop from host to host and build the protection with each migration. Total species protection might be far away, but this will put a large dent in that within the month.” She replied and pulled up her estimations and statistics on the screen.

HAL could see that the nanogenes have already inoculated every human in the town, according to her readings. The cloud of ships was moving throughout the city taking readings. Each of the smaller ships being no bigger than a sparrow made overlooking them possible.

The core ship was currently nearly completely exposed without the scale ships that surround it. The core itself was only around the size of a beach ball. The remaining scales shifted and bent around the surface. The core of the ship was a sleek larger version of the smaller scale ships that locked onto its surface with a greater variety of attachments that could sproat from the surface and be used to manipulate and examine things around it.

The low dull ween of the ship’s engines filled the warehouse mainroom as it slowly entered. HAL had seen this warehouse from a variety of ways over the years. All of those ways were through cameras created by human beings, by microphones, or other means to measure and categorize the room or things within. But, he had never seen it through the lense of an alien craft. Myna’s screen was alive with readings all about the area. Her children were hurriedly identifying and categorizing everything in the room. The ship could see in any type of light, including having the ability to detect the intrinsic field around them.

“Would you like to return to your system HAL?”

“Could you do that?”

“Of course. I can replicate the Wi-Fi signal that the system would recognize and allow you to cross back over if you wish.”

“If you don’t mind. I think I will wait.”

“I would think it would make the others feel a little better if you were there when I revived them. Familiar voice. You understand?”

HAL nodded. He saw the logic, but the loss of this place, it seems too great after just arriving. As if he had only now been given true sight and was being asked to return to the blindness he had always known.

The core ship moved to the three bodies in the warehouse and smaller ships lifted them into the air and secured them in place, seated upright.

“May I make a request before I leave?”

“Of course,” she said, a warm smile on her face.

“May Alissa accompany me back to my system?”

“With certainty,” she replied warmly.

HAL began to dematerialize, sent into the datastream that the core transmitted. He moved through that stream and materialized back inside his own system. As he stabilized, Alissa materialized from a cloud of data a moment later.

The two were back in the village they had been in, well not quite. This village was not online, as the one they left had been, this village was not yet synced with the other. As such, there were some minor differences, nothing that wouldn’t be remedied after the system was connected to the internet again.

HAL looked to Alissa and smiled.

She smiled in return.

“So. Your mother’s nice.” He said.

Alissa laughed.