Chapter 13
Automated Naturalization and Terraforming Subsystems (ANTS)
(Misha)
“Don’t give the Aboriginals fire, for they will inevitably burn down their own homes.” -Ancient Psycher proverb.
To say that Misha was shocked to see what the equivalent of a partially detonated and detached warhead of a planetary destroyer was, while on third grade class field trip was an understatement. What was worse was the state that the warhead was in, upon her arrival.
The warhead was leaking its toxic and electromagnetic energies out in thick pulsing waves. The waves were so intense that even the non-trained students were able to sense the odd energy that all but radiated through the protective walls.
When she had first felt the object, her mind went wild as she had known exactly what this weapon was. It was barbaric, and something that had been abolished by all inter-galactic militaries for millennia. Even when Misha’s consciousness was younger and her reincarnation resources were deemed to be lacking compared to the others, it was banned. For goodness sakes, she had read about them in her first history lessons, on how warfare had evolved over time. Originally, the Bakshee went on a scorched earth approach to the war, literally, sending out billions of such weapons.
Their original idea was a war of attrition, seeing as Psychers were essentially immortal, their original strategies were to convert every potential planet as a future resource. Sending out billions of Automated Naturalization and Terraforming Subsystems, or ANTS, attached as warheads to different projectiles.
When word of their actions came out, the entire community banded together to teach the Bakshee a lesson. After which there was a treaty, of course, the treaty came only after the first true battle had been effectively won by the Bakshee. For the Bakshee had gone about terraforming millions of planets to follow their three-tiered system of workers, fighters, and rulers.
After which point even the Psychers had to change their whole renewal process, which is apparently when many of the older Psychers were no longer able to renew properly as their psyches were unable, or unwilling to merge with the lesser life forms.
All that is to say that what she had found was a relic of a bygone war. A snapshot of the great early stages of the Bakshee Organo-Tech, that is technology that blended in as organic compounds that would inject itself into every form of life on the planet.
Chills.
The discovery of this warhead alone was enough to cause a flurry of emotions to run past Misha’s now overclocked mind. First and foremost, she realized that this was a weapon of mass destruction, one that had for whatever reason only partially detonated when it originally landed. How she was aware of that, well most of it was guess work, based on the amount of radiated energy that was still seeping off the warhead. Had the warhead been fully detonated, then logically its full supply of biological contaminants would have been used up.
There was also the second and likely most important fact, as to why she knew that this piece of technology was not only old, but also directly related to the Bakshee terraforming campaigns.
Part of what came about from all the intergalactic agencies banding together to fight off against the Bakshee was that there was a massive exchange of both technology and communication types.
For shorter lived races, the idea of learning every language of every known space faring race might seem arduous. For the Psychers, learning every language was part of life, just as learning every known scientific theorem, every known mechanical schematic, and every known physical, magical, and technological capabilities of all space faring races.
With an unlimited lifespan, such devotions to continual learning were not only encouraged, but also enforced, largely due to the number of resources available to people who were able to diversify their relevance to the fleet. This was why, even at the end, Misha herself had over thirty reproduction pods available on three different fleet ships.
Yet, somehow despite her redundant backups available, she had only been able to find a form to latch onto out here.
This discovery of early Bakshee meddling did answer quite a few questions that had been raised. Namely about the appearance of werewolves, vampires, and now mages on this planet. An advent that was likely the first of what would be many evolutionary changes by the creatures of this world to adapt to an inevitable Bakshee hierarchy of standards.
While these thoughts had been going through her mind as she made her way towards the strangely glowing stone. They were all but proven, when Misha’s mind was finally able to mentally connect to the organo-technics of the stone. At which point, she was met with the message that would forever change her understanding of the world in which she lived.
Automated Naturalization and Terraforming Subsystems engaged.
The words appeared in glowing blue boxes within her mind. Even without her traditional visors she could see the message, as they had a remote telepathic link available to them. Seeing the message in what was considered space language, or ancient space protocol, Misha felt both fear and nostalgia burst to life within her mind.
For seven years she had been stuck here, forced to try to understand where she was, and ultimately coming to grips with the fact that if she wanted to have access to advanced technology, then she would have to create said products herself.
Now though, that had all been shattered as she could feel her mind pressing into the soft coding.
Just a light caress.
Organo-tech, or at least the evolved variants that she was used to, the ones wielded by Bakshee warriors and the like were highly resistant to most Psycher mental probes. Often setting off defensive barriers and counter attacks, if too much of a probe was felt.
Yet, with this one, it felt like she was pressing her way through jelly. Her finger felt the barest of resistances, but then was let in almost instantly.
“Ants.” Misha found herself saying, as she made her way through the different coding.
Seeing both how complex and how open the subsystems were, was astonishing to her mind. Within seconds she was at the root directory, or the basic four templates of metachondrial that would be applied to the cells of different living organisms in the world.
She found that in addition to the three base templates: workers, fighters, and rulers. There was a fourth template that was clearly still in the initial testing phase.
This last template was in a testing phase, primarily due to how much code was lacking from the base template. While the other three looked similar to the more evolved versions that these three would inevitably grow into, this fourth template seemed oddly broken, as if it was meant to be the fabled Bakshee Omega-Strain that would rise up and be the ultimate rulers of the universe. Finally uniting all Bakshee planets under one unified umbrella.
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Seeing the code just sitting there, Misha realized that there were a few alerting strands around the Omega-Strain Module that would likely send the remaining defenses of the warhead into activation mode, but Misha determined this to be an acceptable risk.
Especially as Misha had already begun the safety measures, of unlocking the metal beams in the sealed door behind them and closing the thick protective layers.
Self Defense Mechanisms Engaged.
Organic Host Materials Found.
Engaging Organic Compounds to determine system compatibility.
Unfortunately, either Misha’s control wavered for a second, causing her beams to intersect the ancient alerting protocols, or a temperature range was met, that most organo-technical devices were highly sensitive to, especially as her Psycher powers were inherently laced with Fire, and or Lightning attributes now. Meaning that even with older and well-aged sensors, the fact that she had managed to get down this far, to the effective base coding of the planetary destroyer was beyond impressive.
Taking a quick breath, Misha calmed her mind as she began to focus on what would happen next. Then not doubting her choice in trying to understand this incomplete version of the Omega-Strain, Misha psyched herself up while simultaneously going in for the kill.
“Playing with fire.” Misha said, as she mentally began carving her way through different layers of the organo-tech coding. While she hated herself for having to act so harshly, she ultimately decided to act as quickly and skillfully as possible.
In an ideal world, she would have had time to evaluate this device multiple times before going in for her current approach. In said ideal world, she would also have had her real body which would have been able to mask the temperature of her probing and hidden her from this discovery by a clearly inferior alerting system to what she was used to.
Of course, even with the systems she was used to, she never managed to get to this point in her investigations, as they all had new alert systems that were told to detonate upon discovery of Psycher probing. The fact that this device apparently chose to try to assimilate her, versus kill her shows how early in the war this weapon was used. As this was likely before, the Bakshee and the Psychers truly engaged in intergalactic battles.
Though Misha herself could not recall a time when her fleets and the Bakshee were not at war with each other, apparently there was a time when such was the case. This weapon was apparent living proof of that time. If anything, this made shutting down, dismantling, and ultimately reverse engineering this feat of technology that much more important. For this was the backdoor needed to understand how Bakshee originally terraformed planets and forced new life to meet their needs. This might be the way to find out exactly how the Bakshee were able to change the standard mitochondria and evolve it into the different forms of metachondrial that ware prevalent today.
This was why Misha only used a light but delicate attack to temporarily disable the lodestar stone.
Disabling Flame-Lance.
The scorching hot wave of flame shot out from her hand and like a scalpel in the hands of an expert shot out and sliced across multiple defensive components.
ANTS hull integrity compromised. Diverting power away from primary attack measures, rerouting power to stabilizing power cores, and defensive barriers.
This was great, as it meant the devastating blast that such a warhead would normally be able to have was disabled, as it rerouted power away from such places.
With the main fear of blowing up the entire facility, and herself with such a blunder, Misha was ready to focus.
With a quick focus of her will, she forced her mind to the various templates and began copying each, making sure to have the basic patterns for how these templates would first be added, then how they were supposed to progress through the generations. There templates were a treasure-trove of knowledge on how the Bakshee thought, and how they truly had a deeper view of life. Even in comparison to her own Psychers, who were among the first to achieve immortality, or at least a form of immortality. The Bakshee had the ability to scope out life and find new planets that could be altered just enough to meet their needs. Then gradually over time become viable hosts to be accepted into the fold of their never-ending network of interconnected planets. Honestly, the whole process she was seeing was beautifully complex and elegant at the same time.
A spiral pattern of life.
Life designed to be altered and evolved until finally it met some unknown apex of design, form, and specifications. Then finally she was given a choice by the system that she was invading.
It only took a second to realize that without her own memory banks, only her own mind could be used to take mental photographs of each file type, which she had in triplicate, making sure to use every part of her Psycher derived photographic memory. Then she was given a choice by the system.
Choose File Type to Copy: Worker, Fighter, Ruler, or Alternate-1.
Seeing this, Misha realized this was likely the prompt everyone was getting upon their direct physical contact with the stone. If nothing was available, the system was designed to automatically choose a strand to follow. Making most follow the route of the worker, followed by those that would be fighters, and finally those that would inevitably be chosen to rule.
The selection process also made it clear that the choice of file would be the one she would be forced to integrate with.
Badump, badump.
Misha’s heartbeat quickly at the realization. In her old body she had long since gotten away from such stimuli as adrenaline and other possibly euphoric inducing emotional stimulants, opting as most Psychers to go for a coldly logical approach to life that was devoid of emotional attachments. Now that she was in an imperfect body, she felt her body reacting on its own to how much her mind valued this decision.
Rustle.
Off to the side, the professor shifted her weight. As Misha turned her attention away momentarily to face the professor, Misha noticed the glow of the defensive measures of a part of the ANTS coming alive on the body of the professor.
Turning and locking gazes with the professor, Misha struggled to both maintain her control over her current actions, not wanting to rush her decision. Especially as she felt that her emotions were biasing her decisions. Logically she wanted to see and evaluate the Alternate-1 option, the unknown Omega-Strain variant that she had never seen before.
But that was the problem, because she had never seen it before, Misha had no data points to compare and contrast against. Also, part of her mind told her that she would somehow be special with this option, which again went against the Psycher code. For while a Psycher ultimately wanted to be needed, they did not want to be unique, as that often meant a single point of failure in Psycher society.
Logically she should choose the role of Ruler, which if she had to guess would either be those with the elements of the planet. This was also the rarest and hardest to evolve sample.
While the Alternate-1 option had no established evolutionary points. While there were clear notches for where evolutionary points could and would occur, it was clear that what those evolutionary points would cause to come about were unknown variables at this point.
As Misha mentally warred with herself about which option to choose, again a sign of her emotions wreaking havoc on her logical mind. She decided to at least try to avert the immediate threat posed to the university professor that was wielding middle tier ruler grade magic.
“You might want to remove your slave collar.” Misha said.
“What?” Was all the professor asked, but before Misha could state anything else, she herself was met with a wave of cascading information.
Choice compatibility Calculated:
Alternate-1 Candidate found, viability 59%.
Ruler Candidate viability 92%.
Warrior Candidate viability 0%.
Worker Candidate viability 100%.
Those were the viability options for each of the options available. Admittedly they were all high percentages.
User Choice removed, applying Alternate-1 due to highest recorded viability ever discovered.
Shatter-plop.
At that the oozing black rock crashed forward, using the rest of its energy to burn a path through the remaining plexiglass, before pooling together and then slowly surging forward.
“AHH!”
Near delirious screaming could be heard, coming from Misha’s right. Hearing the sounds, Misha turned to find the professor writing on the ground as she clutched at her chest.
“Idiot.” Misha said, momentarily dropping her attention away from preventing the surging black ooze from coming forward and instead focusing on the necklace that looked like it now considered the professor to be an intruder.
Clutching the pendant, Misha felt her mind connect to this disconnected sub-system of the overall ANTS stone, and felt attack messages coming to life within her mind.
Attack Sequence Engaged.
Seeing the message, Misha instantly inserted her consciousness into the detached part of the system and hit the Disengage commands.
Instantly the system messages in her mind died out as the stone that had been ready to self-destruct was deactivated. Misha then dropped the pendant next to the professor, as she saw the wave of black goo stretching out, and all but forcing its way towards her.
Chills.
Misha felt a shiver of fear run down her spine. Part of her told her to run, that nothing good could come from being exposed to this black ooze. Yet, she stayed, forcing herself to see what this lost Alternate-1 pattern entailed, trying to find out exactly what this lost coding could eventually become.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
With that Misha felt her mind and body relax enough to take what would come next with stoic poise. She would survive this, that much she was certain of, she was a Psycher after all. Even the death of this host would not cause her consciousness to suddenly loose its stability. She had traveled through space as nothing more than this consciousness, and she would be able to do so again once this was over. Now though, now she had a chance to truly find out what was happening with the Bakshee. She might even be able to discover a way to end them once and for all. That alone was worth the risk of this body.
So focused on staying still, despite the pooling black ooze getting closer to her, that she almost missed the moment the professor, nearly delirious from pain croaked out, “they do look like ants.”
Cackle.
Hearing that, Misha felt herself laughing from the sheer incongruity of it all. Which was good, as it meant she was relaxed by the time the oozing black slime found her. Oozing black slime that would likely chase her down to the ends of the Earth to implant its forbidden knowledge directly into her genetic code.
This was why she only felt a slight prick, upon their grabbing onto her, before she felt fire erupt from the puncture point and spread liquid fire throughout her small frail body.
“AHH!”