COLIN POV
I had a very hard time telling the passage of time in this place. We didn't need to eat. We rarely slept. Occasionally, we'd get a message from Gambler that one or more of us were at a limit for cognitive power and needed to enter a recuperative coma. The coma was absolutely nothing like sleep. We didn't dream, and whoever was in the coma would just sit in a corner, ramrod straight, eyes glazed and unseeing for a while before emerging as good as new.
But that didn't mean we didn't see changes. We had pushed our territory out away from our original starting base a long way in every direction, conquering several shatters and a few wild fragments, as well as allying with the Three Little Pigs. While the fragments we had allied with retained their individuality, Gambler was the boss, taking control of our power domination.
Some of the wild fragments had refused to join us, so we had to fight. We received their ethereum, but no boost to will or mind capacity. From their shattered remains, Rok'gar harvested what he referred to as "god-tier material." He was saving them up for his crafting skills to level up enough to make use of.
I had attained multiple new base-building skills, the most important of which was Command Center Teleport. I could teleport myself to any of the command centers we had set up around our territory. Each command center allowed Gambler to project himself a little farther out.
We had seven control centers now—our original and six more pushing out our borders. Our alliance was enough to crush any of the nearby fragments, which was starting to alarm me.
We picked up a new skill here and there. I had half a dozen defense and building focused abilities, and Sage had picked up a [Domesticate] variant of her [Tame] that would let her permanently keep a non-sentient being as a pet. She had three pet slots available and was saving them for cool or cute minions, or so she said. Rok’gar had picked up [Mass Production] which let him make multiple copies of an outfit or weapon. That let him set up our NPC units with better gear faster.
After a battle that had been over almost before it started, while checking our towers and changing out some of my defensive options, I asked Gambler, "When we began, you told me your strength. How much has it increased?" our last few victories had felt too easy, which in a game is always a sign that you need to be trying to claim more territory.
He paused, then said, "There are two questions here. From a perspective of how much have I grown, my strength now, I would estimate at approximately 112 times my original."
That was good, but still nowhere near enough to explain why we were walking all over people. "There are other fragments larger than you?”
“Many are much larger. However, the larger fragments exist on a higher plane of existence than I do. I am nearly the largest on this plane, which is why there are no longer many threats. On the other hand, I am running out of raw materials which I can use to continue my growth."
"So what's the answer?"
"I must evolve."
“Hang on. What do you mean by 'evolve'?"
"Once I have reached enough power, I must transmute myself to be able to compete on the next layer of existence."
"Just how many levels of existence are there here?"
"I believe there to be two layers above us. There is a vast gulf between myself and the beings at the top, the ones fighting the slave engines. I will have to evolve multiple times to reach that level."
I felt a stir of excitement and realized it had been a long time since I'd thought beyond the strategy for the next fight or what a new ability could do for me. "Wait, if you did reach that level, you'd be able to communicate with my people? We could get out of here. Sage, Rok'gar, and me."
“It won’t be as easy as that,” Gambler said. “From what I’ve gleaned, your people are tapping into the dominator network in order to access contested zones. That means the galactics control communications. If I try to contact Coyote, they’ll know exactly where you are. Do you trust them not to make use of that?”
“No.” I sighed.
“Besides, we made a deal, did we not?”
"I'm not planning to abandon you," I assured him. "We're allies, for good and ill. So, you need to evolve multiple times. Let's take this one step at a time. If we do evolve, and we find ourselves on a similar plane to this—"
He hesitated. "In that there are fragments scrapping for ethereum, yes. We will have gone from one of the largest to one of the smallest again."
Stolen novel; please report.
"Got it. You're a big fish in a small pond. You can't get any bigger without changing ponds, but when you do, you're going to be a minnow. You'll have to work just as hard. Will our abilities move over?"
"I believe you will be able to evolve with me. However, I am going to have to ask the entire alliance to go with me, as evolution will bind us even more closely together, and I fear we will not be able to separate again.”
“Let me know when they agree -”
“They have done so," Gambler said, interrupting me.
I blinked and remembered I was talking about beings who communicated telepathically and probably had a different timescale than me. "Then how do we evolve?"
"I've never done this before," Gambler said, "but I believe, to use your metaphor, that what we really need to do is latch onto a whale in a larger pond. Something big, and slow. A fearsome target, but not equipped with teeth and claws. With your help, I can destroy a whale and take its shell."
"Whales don't have shells," I heard myself mutter. "Sounds like you're a hermit crab and now we need to get you a new home."
"Whatever metaphor helps you to understand," Gambler said.
"So how do we do this?"
“I can boost you and allies up for the attempt. Our units will not be able to function there until I evolve. You will need backup. I suggest you ask some of the allied minds.”
As Sage and I had swept through Protoss Hell, taming its minions and converting them to our cause, we had come across several singular minds. Gambler had told us about them. Instead of being fragments of the Overmind that had made up this reality, they had been individual progenitor beings who had placed themselves into the matrix of the Overmind millions of years ago, in a dormant but untouched state.
I had assumed these minds would be, well, Progenitors. Scary, unknowable, alien. They hadn't quite been what I expected. One of them explained to me that though they had stayed separate, they had a glimpse of the Overmind's dreams. When ideas leaked in from the outside, over the millenia they lay dormant, they had changed and become something else.
That made them an interesting lot. While some of them belonged to one of the three major factions, many of them had their own distinctive beliefs which made them refuse to join the Overmind in the first place.
After getting access to whatever gestalt of human history this Overmind had received, these minds had chosen human personas to represent themselves to us. Some identified with various famous human philosophers, others with warlords, politicians, or poets.
That furthered my belief that the Overmind had been exposed to human ideas before we came along. I had dropped out of school at fourteen and Sage was kidnapped from home at eleven. Even when she’d continued her education later, it had not focused on Earth history and philosophy. Neither of us would have been good sources of knowledge. None of the minds had taken on Orc personas, which it seemed like they should have if they were reading from us and Rok’gar alike.
I was convinced that the fragments and solo minds had exposure to human influence beyond just us. Maybe there was a way to get a message out to our people, to tell them that Sage and I were alive. My team leader, Sage's brother, would not rest until they found a way to get to us.
I kept that in the back of my mind, hoping Gambler didn't read it, because if Shad showed up and offered to teleport Sage, Rok’gar, and me out of here, I would take his offer without hesitation. I didn’t think he was lying to me about the dominator network listening in to everything Coyote was doing, but he might be over-emphasizing how much control it had, to keep us from looking for a way out.I didn’t mean to to abandon Gambler, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be here forever.
Now Sage and I went to intervene the solo minds. In the middle of the main encampment, I’d raised a building just for them. The Acropolis was a rectangular building with white pillars lining either side of an open-air plaza. The people there were varied in their styles and costumes. Men with tall heels conversed with women in saris. Middle-aged professors in waistcoats and whiskers argued with elderly Greeks in togas. They represented thousands of years of human knowledge and arguments. On the Acropolis steps, a Greek philosopher was contending with a man in tweeds and a muttonchop beard.
"And yet, I don't know if the notion of evolution is entirely incompatible with my belief in forms," one said. "Or do you not see that the fittest is that which is most closely related to the ideal form?"
"Nonsense, Plato,” the Darwin character declared. "Your form is judged to decide what is closest to the pure and beautiful. You suggest an intelligent designer, whether you realize it or not.”
They stopped as Sage and I arrived. The other philosophers turned to see us as well. Sage grinned. "Sorry to interrupt you, boys. Time for a call to action. Gambler, want to fill them in?”
"Yes, we have all just been told what is to occur," Abe Lincoln declared. “You are calling for war, and seeking those who will wage it. I fear we are arguing in a house divided against itself. Your efforts will only put further pressure on the fractures. We should withdraw, and seek a measured peace.”
“Nonsense!” a man with a German accent and a preposterously large mustache declared. “We must fight to prove ourselves the strongest, the ubermensch of this new world in which we find ourselves.”
“If we can continue to exist only by burdening the existence of others, are we in the right?” a woman with severely slicked-back hair and glasses asked.
An older Chinese man spoke up. “Harmony and respect for all beings are paramount. Respect for our elders is the strong foundation of a society —”
I held up a hand. “Great. Lots of different perspectives here. Right now, I’m looking for those willing to fight. Any takers?”
A man in buckskin sprang forward. He drew a knife and traced a line across the ground. "Anyone who stands with us, step across the line," he said.
Sage laughed at that. The personalities looked at each other. After a moment, the plump balding man wearing Regency-era clothes, with square spectacles on his nose, stepped forward. “We must all hang together, or we’ll all hang separately.”
“Right on, Ben!” a woman wearing old-fashioned slacks and an aviator’s cap cheered. She followed him across the line, followed by a couple dozen more. The rest hung back, looking at their feet and not meeting my eyes.
"All right," I said. It was more than I had thought we might get, but fewer than I really hoped. "No point in delaying. Let's hit the armory and get ready to go."