No plan survives contact with the enemy.

The Old One was only referred to as "Special Subject X1" or "SX1" or simply "One." It was also called "He", a label that did not exactly apply to a being such as it, which was sexless, reproducing through the implantation of the single larvae contained within the feeding tentacles.

He had gotten used to it, since his capture by the Mad Lemur a long period of time ago.

At first, he had been experimented on, used as a medical subject, as his captor stripped away every single secret he had, including those he did not know he had.

But he was patient. He had eventually been able to learn much about his captor by listening to her insane ramblings, her enraged screams, and her methods.

It had been a total shock to realize that much of her fury and enraged actions were a facade.

What was beneath that facade was much worse.

Cold, analytical, driven by great passion that was tempered into a weapon. Insane, yes, but that insanity was reigned in and guided into something more.

I had frightened him to touch what was beneath the Mad Lemur's facade.

He had always considered himself extremely intelligent, even among the other Atrekna.

He had been subjected to the whims of a greater intellect.

In a strange way, it fit his view of the universe and existence. The strong dominated the weak, the cunning and crafty dominated the oblivious or foolish, the intelligent ruled over the lessers with an iron fist.

The knowledge that the Mad Lemur was more intelligent than he was had been a shock. The realization that she could apply that knowledge more accurately and effectively than he could had been even larger shock.

He began to understand the Mad Lemur. He watched her at work. She enjoyed gloating, enjoyed forcing him to observe as she worked on her terrible task.

He was intelligent. Unlike the other Old Ones she had captured, he was capable of pattern recognition with enough example sets.

He was also careful.

He had seen the Mad Lemur stop an enraged slavespawn with an enraged scream that vocalized the raw hatred and wrath that poured from her unshielded mind. It had cowered away from her, covering its head and braincase with its armored limbs even as it made terrified chittering sounds.

He had watched her walk forward and pet it, reassuring it with her touch that it was safe now. Fearless, as if the slavespawn would not dare rip her limb from limb and feast on her remains.

She had been right. It had not.

A long period of time had passed since the early years, which the Old One thought of as the Era of Agony. Then came the Era of Exploration. Then the Era of Application as the Mad Lemur had begun to apply the knowledge she had gained.

He had watched as she had created twelve distinct subspecies of his people. Had modified them, had cloned them and implanted memories into them. Had spoken with them, had helped them craft their own societies and cultures.

The Old One had heard primitives speak of deities.

She was a Mad God among her creations.

Yet he was kept separate. When she had allowed the other subjects to 'escape' she had kept him in captivity.

It had changed.

He was allowed a work area, under constant monitoring, but a work area all the same. He was given access to scientific tools and material, to research material and knowledge databases. The Mad Lemur had not suggested a field of study, merely informed the Old One that any attempt to manipulate chronotrons or engage in temporal studies would result in painful and agonizing death, only to be rebirthed with the memories of those agonies.

The Old One was wise enough to understand that he was the dominated one.

He obeyed the rules of the Mad Lemur.

He was allowed to craft his own shelter in a wide open area beneath a dim red star. His senses, even his phasic senses, told him that he was outside. That he was no longer inside the facility, what he had begun to think of as The Dungeon of the Mad Lemur.

He knew better.

He had learned about hard light holograms, about enhanced and augmented virtual reality.

The Old One had listened to the Mad Lemur's rules.

And had been very careful not to break them.

In time, he began to appreciate something.

He no longer had to defend himself from the plots of others. He no longer had to shield aberrant thoughts from the Overmind or other Atrekna.

It took a long period of time, but he realized he was allowed to think and ponder as he willed.

He knew that, of course, it was still beneath the watchful eye of the Mad Lemur.

But she was as alien in her thought process and motives as any creature he had ever encountered.

He had requested the ability to plant a garden. He had expected augmented reality only, but instead she had produced bags of dirt, of fertilizer, as well as seeds, shoots, and samples. He had drawn a fountain and asked for it.

The Mad Lemur had provided an actual fountain.

Which is why he moved, stately and elegantly, clad in a shimmering robe that enhanced his phasic powers, through the winding path of his garden. He was armed with sheers, carefully pruning and caring for the flowers, mushrooms, vines, and stalks.

The garden was rich and lush.

The Mad Lemur had even provided small animals to move about, small insects to assist with pollination.

All of them designed for beauty and harmony according to the Old One's senses.

It frightened him, slightly, that she had been able to produce life forms that fit his sensibilities, aesthetic desires he did not even know he had, without his request.

Over time, he had learned to accept it.

She was the Mad Lemur.

The Old One had seen her create matter from apparently nothing. He had learned of nanites, had studied them, but her mastery over them awed him.

The Old One had watched her create and destroy in equal measure. Create life and nurture it.

A small part of him was fearful of the Mad Lemur and her powers. Not the nanites. The power that her will and rage and intellect gave her.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Still, she was the dominant one, having proved her superiority to him in all manners that mattered, making him the submissive one.

Which was fine to the Old One.

She had her rules.

She had her laws.

He found it strange that he preferred to live under her iron fisted rules, where he was allowed to think and do as he pleased, as long as he obeyed her iron clad rules.

In some ways, he felt as if he was her student as she experimented upon and examined his species. She had him observe every thing that she did. From vivisection and autopsies to intellect and skill tests to genetic modifications.

After a while, the ones that she created, the twelve patterns she settled on, no longer disgusted him.

The Old One found that his interest in them, in observing them, outweighed the instinctive revulsion he had initially felt.

It took him a bit to see the patterns she was using, and once he did, he was horrified. He tried to determine if there was any way her methods could fail. A small, rebellious part of him, hoped that he could discover a way he could make them fail.

All that happened is he discovered that she was slowly but surely building a robust system that could handle errors and unforeseen circumstances.

A small part of him was angered. Wasn't there any place she did not out perform him? True, his phasic powers were precise and delicate, but she could undo it all merely by walking by without her circlet, seemed to be aware of what he was doing with his phasic powers with just a glance. Couldn't he, with millions of years of life under his belt, having assisted in visualizing the archeoreversion attack that had wiped out her people, visualize a method of defeating her?

No.

Her domination of him was complete.

He watched, helplessly, as she set about crafting the method to dominate his people and drive them to extinction by using evolved versions of themselves that were better in every way. He watched, horrified, as she not only crafted their biology, but then their history, their culture, their society.

When he had tried to inform her that what she was doing was impossible, she had laughed at him.

"My species developed ways to mold and reform culture before we created the atomic bomb," she had laughed at him. "We warped our own minds and societies with glee."

She leaned forward. "You use a communal mind, which means the opinions and 'facts' supported by the communal mind are reality," her eyes began to burn a cold amber. "And since I control the communal mind, I control reality."

That had left him pondering for some time. How could the communal mind be an exploitable weakness for his people? The communal mind was made up of the opinions and the correct thoughts of...

he had stopped there after the thousandth time of thinking that train of thought.

She had determined a way to identify the 'correct' thoughts as she wished them to be.

It was then he despaired. He knew that suicide would do no good, she would take joy in his misery and bring him back no matter what he did.

She was a mad deity and he was completely in her power.

He watched as she allowed the twelve test subjects to 'escape' after modifying their memories.

It shamed him how easily those test subjects fell straight into the actions that she had predicted.

"They want to be fooled, they want to believe that they outsmarted me. They will never examine those memories closely," she had told him. When he had protested their minds would be examined by others, she had sneered. "They know that the test subjects outsmarted me. How could they not? They are Atrekna, ancient and powerful, and I am simply a lemur whose people were squatting in caves only a few tens of thousands of years ago."

She had laughed then, a wild, mad thing.

"I could put Dramatic Reenactment in big bold Atrekna runes over their memories, and my released test subjects, your overmind, your communal mind, and any who examine those memories, will simply feel smug and superior that my test subjects escaped my grasp, many of them blowing up my lab and/or killing me as they jumped through the doors just ahead of the explosion," she had told him, wiping her eyes from where her maddened laughter had brought tears to her eyes.

She smirked.

"All of you are so alike."

He had despaired and returned to his domicile and his garden.

He sat in front of the fountain, watching the pollinating insects, the nectar drinking flying creatures, and the berry/vine/root/tuber eating creatures, as he held a flower in his hand, pondering the vein structure of the pedals.

Everything went silent, the insects and animals whisking away and hiding.

There was a rumbling that shook his feet, made the water dance, and made the pollen shimmer over the stones of the area around the fountain.

An arm, thick corded muscle, brown skin, barbs of exodermal calcium deposits in the form of hooks gleaming in the light, and a taloned hand burst from the stone. It bent at the elbow as another arm burst from the paving stones.

He watched as a large, brutish form, with black wings made up of a skeletal structure with a thin membrane stretched across, horns, a large head with fangs and tusks and horns.

And gunmetal gray eyes.

It stood there for a moment as the paving stones skittered across the area he sat in, locking back into place, hiding the crack in the ground.

The taloned hands reached up, grabbed the thick horns on either side of the head, and ripped the body down the middle. It puddled around the feet on the Mad Lemur and slowly dissolved as she lit a cigarette, the gem on her circlet gleaming.

"Are you busy?" she asked politely.

**I am not** the Old One said.

"There is a development in my project," she said. She snapped the lighter closed and put it in the breast pocket of her severe suit-jacket. "Would you like to observe it?"

He nodded slowly.

"Follow," she ordered, turning away and walking toward the far end of the garden.

He stood up, still holding the flower, and floated after her.

"Stage Two of the project was initiated some time ago," she stated.

The Old One nodded. He had seen her use the nanites to accomplish her goal.

"We have moved on to Stage Three, and there has been some interesting developments," the Mad Lemur stated, stopping at the brick wall at the far end of his garden. She pressed her hand on the wall and a doorway of brick shifted out of the way. "I had estimated that your progeny, the Atrekna-2.0, would engage in warfare and strife against the other subspecies."

The Old One nodded. **that is logical** He stepped into the hallway, feeling the plant in his hands vanish with a fzzt and the tingling of the sterilization field wash over him.

"Man plans, God laughs," she said softly.

**your plan went awry** he guessed.

She nodded slowly. "Once the replacement of the currently residing Atrekna took place, I had assumed that orbital and space assets would be used to wipe out at least one or two of the subspecies," the Mad Lemur said as she walked down the hallway. "Using the nanites to simulate a bioplague that attacked the overmind tissues, to prevent superluminal communication as well as disrupt the Atrekna overmind system, went off just as I had estimated."

The Old One stayed silent. She had shown him as it had occurred.

"The remaining primordial Atrekna, you, fled in the face of the new subspecies increased power and ability, as well as their willingness for mutual cooperation," she stated. A door opened at her touch. "Follow."

The Old One went along quietly.

"However, the estimated internecine warfare never broke out," she said. The pointed at a comfortable chair, a padded shallow bowl set at a 45 degree angle. "Sit."

The Old One sat, adjusting his iridescent robe.

The Mad Lemur turned on the 2.5D monitors. It showed the cities, from the view of the nanites that he had learned were spread by the uncounted trillions across every cubic meter. It showed Atrekna of various subspecies moving around.

It also showed multiple subspecies moving around together and obviously speaking.

**the cooperation metric exceeded your estimations** the Old One stated.

She nodded, moving over and sitting down at a chair with a small disposal unit built into the arm. She tapped her ashes even as she leaned back.

Another view showed teams of subspecies working together to calm and tame slavespawn.

**outside of your estimated parameters** the Old One stated.

The Mad Lemur nodded.

The servitors and the food species were living in orderly comfortable dwellings and were obviously employed as well as building works of art.

**again outside of your estimated parameters** the Old One stated.

The Mad Lemur leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her cigarette held in one hand, her chin cradled in the other. She pointed with the burning cigarette.

"I thought about wiping them all out. Figuring out what I did wrong. Reset the experiment and try again," she said.

**that is the logical and most effective method** the Old One agreed. **identify the point of failure and attempt to rectify it**

The Old One expected the Mad Lemur to summon a big red button and press it, wiping out all life on the planet.

Instead she nodded.

"Yes," she said softly. "We have reached the point where clearly the experiment should be stopped."

She suddenly smiled, showing enough teeth to make the Old One nervous that she might suddenly leap on him and bite him to death.

She had done that exact thing repeatedly before he had learned not to attack her with his phasic powers.

"Except," she said sharply, turning to look at the screens. "We've come this far, we might as well keep going and see what happens."

The Old One simply nodded.

She picked up a bowl off the table next to him and handed it to him. When he looked down he saw it was full of peeled shrimp, still warm.

"The subspecies are about to start their assault upon your people," she said, giggling. She picked up another bowl, which the Old One knew was some kind of plant seed dried, then heated till the water droplet inside turned to steam and the expansion exploded the seed, then laced with sodium and something called butter.

"Let us sit, Special Subject X1, and watch as your children eradicate your misbegotten species and raise this system out of the quantum foam hole you dug for it," she said, her voice going low and soft again.

She turned to face him.

"After all, until this system joins the rest of the universe at a 1:1 timescale," she paused a moment, obviously for effect. "Because, just as it has been for over three thousand years..." she paused again.

The Old One felt his blood run cold and the shrimp in his mouth tasted bitter.

"Your people are trapped in here with me until that happens."