~~~Unit A2228183-Alpha, recently upgraded individual
I woke up on the operating table and sat up. I felt oddly refreshed, possibly because this new body was never used before. I stared at my hands. Though I knew they were artificial, they looked completely real. Those engineers even managed to create a synthetic nervous system so I could still feel.
“I know, it’s amazing,” said the physician who had been watching me the whole time. “Now, we’ve had a few defects - don’t worry, nothing too serious - but it seems you’re fine.”
“Wait, wait, wait... Shouldn’t you actually check them or something?” I ask.
“No, don’t worry, if something wasn’t working, you’d know.”
“So, I’m free to go?”
“Yep. You should get an assignment through the neural interface soon.”
The neural interface was quite possibly our greatest achievement to date. It was a tiny chip implanted into an individual’s brain, allowing an interface directly from the mind to any computer within our network, hence the name. It also granted communication between individuals, similar to telepathy, but without regard toward distance. Its main purpose, however, was to be a portable version of the mind downloading device. Bodies would be interchangeable like clothes. Death would be irrelevant. It took the three science divisions months to simply agree on a design. First, the Neuroscience Division had to explain to the Engineering Division why their design wouldn’t work, then they had to propose an idea on how to change human brain structure to make it accept the interface. Then the Biology Division had to explain why such a genetic manipulation is impossible, and then they proposed their idea. And then the Engineering Division explained why applying the interface to that brain wouldn’t work, forcing them to redesign their concept, and so on.
I then heard a voice in my head. It felt similar to telepathy, but different, artificial.
One hour later...
Two Monolithians came to the moon before the rest in order to assemble a Gateway, which would increase the efficiency of traveling to this moon and back. As soon as it was open, the rest of us came through as well.
The gravity on the moon was significantly lower than on Earth. As such, there was incredibly tall plantlife everywhere. Taller yet were the mountains on either side of the valley we arrived in. We could see the gas giant this moon was orbiting. It occupied a massive portion of the sky and had a small set of rings.
Information from Orbital Command seeped directly into my brain and formed a mental map. Ahead of us and to the right there would be a city. We were to locate our target there.
After a 500 meter walk, we found that the mountain range to our right simply... ended unnaturally and was replaced by a large flat area with multiple massive buildings constructed from a jet black material. There were also a pair of statues almost as big as the buildings themselves dedicated to lizardlike creatures. Their front legs and necks were disproportionately long, and they sat similarly to a cat, with their long tails wrapped around them. Everything was overgrown and looked abandoned.
“So where’s the Negative Matter we came for?” one of my squadmates said. “I want to grab it quick so we have time to take a good look at all this.”
“Somewhere in this city,” another answered. “Maybe one of these structures is a storage unit?”
“Maybe. Alright, split up into teams of two and search these buildings.”
With that, all of us went our separate ways in search of the precious substance. Me and my partner A4291747-Delta began walking toward one of the smaller buildings. A4291747-Delta started a conversation with me:
“So who do you think built all this?”
“Don’t know,” I respond. “They were probably big, though. Now that I think about it, this looks less like a city and more like a small town with giant buildings.”
“Do you think those statues are supposed to be of them?”
“Doubt it. Those paws don’t look like they would be very good at moving rocks and building shelters.”
“Hmph. Wonder why this place is abandoned? Do you think the inhabitants are still alive somewhere?”
“Well, this is the only signs of civilization on this rock or this system, so I guess it’s plausible that whoever built this place is still out there somewhere, though the architecture doesn’t match that of any culture in our archives, be it existing or long gone.”
I paused to think after I said all that. Had I really browsed the entire history of all cultures in the galaxy while having a conversation with my comrade? The Neural Interface was simply incredible. And apparently, the engineers had plans to improve it even further. Undoubtedly, someone on Earth would be able to find some weird reason it was unethical. Because there is apparently something wrong with upgrading the human body.
Suddenly, the ground beneath my foot began to move. I quickly lost my balance and fell over. Looking back to where I was standing, I saw a small, black robot rising from the sand. It was about the size of a cat and stood on many thin legs. It also held a long appendage above its chassis in an aggressive manner. Overall it looked very similar to a scorpion. The robot then proceeded to shoot A4291747-Delta with its tail-like limb. He was dead before he hit the ground, with a massive burning hole in his chest. The robot then aimed the weapon at me, but I pressed the tail to the ground, pointing it away from me. It was incredibly strong, and I was losing my grip, so I picked it up from the ground, still ensuring that it can’t shoot me. Immediately, the scorpion impaled my arm with its sharp legs, causing a malfunction in the prosthetic and forcing me to let go. The robot, however, held on, once again pointing its tail at me. I frantically shook it off, and it fell to the ground, where I kicked it away and started to run until I met the rest of my squad.
One of the squad members threw his knife at the robot still pursuing me. He hit his target perfectly, sending sparks from it and ending its attempts to kill us.
“I can’t believe that worked,” he said as he walked over to the robot. “It went all the way into the hull... Who knew Alerian alloys would make such good knives?”
“It killed A4291747-Delta,” I said.
“Yeah, don’t worry; his mind is safe and sound in the archives. He should be getting a new body any second now,” another Monolithian responded.
“Man, no one told us there’s killer robo-insects here!” the Monolithian examining the robot yelled.
“Calm down, we’ve dealt with worse already,” another replied as he also walked up to the robot to examine it.
Yet another Monolithian walked up to me. “Let me see your arm,” he said. I did as he said and noticed that my fingers were moving erratically without my input. “They’re easily replaceable. We need a supply drop anyway, now that we know there’s hostiles here. Might as well bring an arm in as well.”
A few minutes later...
Just as my squadmate had said, it was very easy to replace an arm. All I had to do was command my old one to detach and pull it out. In my curiosity, I examined both the defective arm and the socket it was attached to. The arm had a long plug extending from where it would attach to my body. Fused to my shoulder was a round metallic socket, connecting the prosthetics to my nervous system. Attaching the replacement arm was just as easy, it was simply a matter of sliding it into the socket until it connected itself.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
As I was clenching a fist to see if the arm was fully functional, A4291747-Delta came up to me in his new body.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he replied.
“So you died, huh?”
“Yup. But I lived.”
That made me chuckle a bit. “What was it like?”
“It was bizarre... The moment that thing hit me with that laser, or whatever it was, it was like I was sleeping, yet conscious at the same time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the state of my mind, I wouldn’t really call it consciousness, but I still remember it... I was still processing information through the Neural Interface. I saw you fighting that thing, as well as the Ecology Team nearly getting eaten by a giant bird on Aleria.”
“Well, I guess I’ll experience that for myself some time as well. We should keep searching, though, time is of the essence.”
“Agreed,” he said, standing up with me. “Same building?”
“Yeah.”
Nearing the building, we encountered two more of those robots. We both shot them as they were crawling out of the ground, but they kept moving. Shooting them again yielded better results.
“Must be pretty advanced, to just shrug of two and a half million watts,” I said.
“And yet they can’t survive a knife?” my partner asked.
“Hey, we’re pretty advanced too. Those knives were sharpened ‘till the blade tip was only a few atoms thick.”
“Are you sure we should destroy these robots though? If they take two shots from our guns, imagine what they could do to the Imperials!”
“I’m sure they could be blown up. Get a bomb powerful enough, and anything will go bye-bye.”
“Yeah, this city included.”
“It’s not like anyone is living here, the Empire would totally level the city if they want that Negative Matter.”
Several more robots resurfaced. I decided to try something new, and handed over control from my arm to the Neural Interface and booted up an aim assist program. Not only did that give me the accuracy I needed, but it also blew the scorpion’s weapon off. I then fell to the ground in order to dodge fire from the remaining robots and used the same trick on two more, making all of the robots either destroyed or disarmed. A4291747-Delta finished off two of them as I got up, but the last one jumped at my face. I knock it away and it exploded as soon as it hits the ground, raising even more robots from the ground.
“Okay, don’t disarm them,” I say.
Later...
“Goddamn, are the others fighting these things too? I’m thinking we might need more guns for this,” A4291747-Delta says, replacing his damaged leg.
I checked. “As a matter of fact, they’re not. Wherever we’re headed, it must be important.”
“Alright, let’s wait here. I’m calling reinforcements.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Three more Monolithians came to our aid after a few minutes.
“Everyone got your weapons ready?” I ask. “Good, let’s go. We’re almost there.”
Apart from destroying a few more robots, the remaining trip was uneventful. When we finally reached the building, we didn’t find any entrances, except a small hole in a wall. That is, small compared to the building. Compared to us, it was gigantic.
The inside was dark, but we had anticipated this and brought a light stick. I activated the device and threw it into the air, where it would levitate and produce enough light to discern the details of the room we found ourselves in. On the far side, there was a cylinder roughly the size of a person. Murals were carved into the walls and ceiling. Some of them depicted the plants seen outside, others showed the same creatures as the statues, still others showed concentric circles that we recognized as maps of both this system and the local gas giant’s series of moons. One mural, however, attracted our attention more than any other. It showed a skeleton of one of the statue creatures dressed in a torn robe and holding a scythe.
“You don’t think...” I mutter.
“These people knew something,” one of my squadmates said.
“I’ll go check out that cylinder thing,” says another Monolithian. “Everyone else, try to see if you can find anything else of interest in the murals.”
“Picture’s worth a thousand words my ass,” I complain. “The only meaning I see is that these things knew what planets are.”
A few hours later...
~~~A311484-Beta, individual examining the cylinder
By sending a nanite swarm into the object before me, I was finally able to figure out what it was. There are far easier ways to have done this, but we were in a hurry and needed results. To put it simply, the cylinder was a hard drive, and still functional. Using the data the nanites collected, we were able to make a crude device that would allow us to download the data from the alien hard drive to our computers for research purposes.
“Hey, are you done yet? We just got a report that an Imperial fleet will be here in less than an hour,” a Monolithian said behind me.
“Don’t rush me,” I yell back. “It’s a miracle this thing works with how quickly we made it.”
In response, the Monolithian left the building again. I connected the last of the now exposed cables to our device and turned it on. A hologram appeared above the hard drive depicting completely unrecognizable alien text. I tried to load a translator program in my Neural Interface, but the language was completely unlike any other, leaving the network hopelessly confused. Looking down at the Alien-Monolith interface, I saw that it had barely made any progress. This will take a while.
With a sigh, I decided to instead take a closer look at the murals on the walls. When I was in the middle of the room, an area of the floor began to descend, with me on top. The platform came to a halt several meters underground and I found myself in an enormous room filled with rows of massive cylindrical containers. Two of them opened and the giants we saw depicted by statues struggled out sluggishly as if they were reluctantly waking up.
Just like the statues, the creatures were lizardlike with disproportionately long front legs and necks. Their skin was a dark shade of brown, with one of them having faint red stripes under its eyes.
As soon as it saw me, I was raised into the air by an unseen force, and the creature with red stripes examined me. It then turned to the other being. They faced each other but made no sound. The stripeless creature then slowly moved on its seemingly deformed legs to the other containers. The striped creature then faced me, and without warning, I was thrown against the floor, and all went black.
~~~Unit A2228183-Alpha, Monolith Soldier
“You two, move in and investigate! We’ll keep watch!” a Monolithian shouted to two individuals. They ran into the building where A311484-Beta was last seen. There were a few seconds of silence, and then the Monolithians were practically thrown out the front door by an invisible force. An enormous lizardlike creature then crawled out.
“Open fire!” a Monolithian yelled. Everyone still on their feet acted accordingly. Despite our best efforts, however, our plasma pistols did very little to the beast. Some of the shots didn’t even reach the skin, being deflected by some sort of invisible barrier. All of us were then lifted off our feet and sent away from the creature. Getting up, I noticed that one of my squad members was levitating, arms and legs flailing in a panic. Then he was rammed against a wall and died. His arm let out a few sparks.
The creature then rose into the air, once again by an unknown means, and began to emit bolts of lightning. Just before we could land any more hits on it, it sent out a shockwave that disabled most of our augments, killing the majority of my squad.
I woke up dazed and confused. Why was I lying on gravel? Why did I hear weapons firing? Opening my eyes, I saw five or six of the creatures fighting Imperial transports in midair, defying all known laws of physics. So I survived by some miracle. Wonder how long that’ll last?
The diagnostic check revealed that I was mostly unfazed by the EMP blast, just about everything was working except my left arm and eye. That would explain why my field of view was so much smaller than usual.
The creatures were distracted, I could still complete the mission. Not wasting my only chance, I ran back inside the building and nearly fell down a large hole in the floor. I then went to retrieve the data we downloaded and got ready to return to the Monolith, but another one of the creatures climbed out of the hole and roared at me. Well shit.
A loud crash attracted both of our attention to the ceiling. An Imperial Transport had crashed into it and sent debris falling onto the creature’s head and killing it. So these things can be killed after all.
I then transported myself back to safety and was given a warm welcome: “Didn’t think you’d survive. Congratulations.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I answered. “Here’s the data. Hope it was worth it.”
~~~Months later...
Unit A0-Alpha, Monolith Overseer