by David Burke
D’varn was as close as possible to actually showing some type of emotion on his normally flat expression. “No, you will not do such a thing in my presence or you will count me as your enemy. I have already warned you that impacting the time continuum has been outlawed by Coreframe for over a hundred thousand of your years. As to the offer of assistance, I cannot move any hoomans outside of the test area or my truce with S’vanth is at an end.”
Jay didn’t say anything but simply stared at D’varn, who took that as acceptance. “He is proposing to restore control of the geographic segmentation and chemical stimulant distribution to me. That would allow me stop the needless deaths that are occurring due to the over-saturation of the stimulant and I could even arrange for all of the clusters to merge together.”
“That would be great. I have been worried about the other clusters. They seem to be experiencing much higher death rates, but they aren’t my responsibility. My first concern is for this cluster,” Jay said, “and what does he want in exchange for this.”
Now it was D’varn’s turn to become silent. Jay reached out with his new ability to see if he could catch a glimpse at the alien’s thoughts but for all that he could tell D’varn was a stone. There simply was nothing there.
Finally he replied, “If I understand hoomans correctly, you will not be pleased with his demand.”
“Just tell me,” Jay said.
“He will exchange the control for one hundred of your newborn children, fifty male and fifty female,” D’varn answered.
Several of the girls groaned no or muttered other angry words. Jay said, “What on Earth, or wherever we are, does he want with babies. Is he going to conduct another experiment? No, actually don’t tell me. I wouldn’t give one child to him let alone one hundred.”
“As you wish. I expected as much,” D’varn said. His tone and unfamiliar facial features gave away nothing of what he was thinking.
“So is he making that proposal to all of the other clusters?” Jay asked.
“No, only to this one.”
“Why does he only want our children?” Harper asked.
“It is not all of your children. He wants children sired by Jay, although he will accept that ten percent come from M1091,” D’varn replied.
Jay recognized the designation for Miguel but could only say, “What? Why?”
“That is not all. He wants ninety offspring from you with ninety different mothers. Each of the mothers must be at a minimum, past the fifth threshold. The stronger they are the better and more he says he is willing to offer. If you will make all one hundred your offspring and can do whatever it is that you are doing to enhance their bodies before turning them over, then he says he will leave the ship and give you all his access codes,” D’varn said.
It was obvious that the A’snkarnt was evading Jay’s questions. “You still aren’t saying why he wants my children. What is he going to use them for?”
Jay heard Amelia’s voice in his head, “You aren’t going to give him our children.”
He wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question but he answered it in kind, “Of course not. I am simply trying to find out what is going on here.”
“I do not condone what he is proposing but it is the pragmatic choice. If you can give him one hundred newborn infants with the enhancements you seem to be able to make in others, then you would get this ship to use as a stable home for your people. It would serve you for many decades even if you multiplied prolifically,” D’varn answered.
“Just answer the question or leave and know that you are the enemy. The friend of my enemy is my enemy just as much as the one hurting us,” Jay said.
The alien sat in his hoverpod staring at them with his large, rarely blinking eyes. Before he said anything Trina jumped in. “Besides Jay has had thirteen children and only one was male. Miguel has fifteen daughters so far. If the ratio is the same as when we got here of thirty to one then Jay would have to sire fifteen hundred children just to get the fifty male children requested.”
“I am confused, do not hoomans find the mating experience to be a pleasant one?” D’varn asked.
That brought a round of giggles from a few of the girls but Jay was too agitated to even smile. “And what does he want these children for?”
“He believes that he can drain their consciousness if he gets them young enough and then download his mind and those of other A’snkarnt into them. He believes this will grant them access to evolved hooman abilities while also maintaining his superior A’snkarnt intellect.”
D’varn made a sound that was something like a sigh. “It is a rather vile concept and I don’t believe for a moment that it is consistent with our race’s ethical obligations but for some reason Coreframe and the supreme council have been silent on the matter. So I have no authority to oppose him. It is for you to decide if you are willing to trade one hundred of your offspring for the potential future of your race.
“But you should also know that there is less time than we expected. A Forlorn armada has arrived at the fringe of your solar system. The previous cruiser was able to slip past the defenses for some unknown reason, although I have my suspicions. This force though will have to fight past the defenses the A’snkarnt have placed in their path. You likely have a few months at the most before they will be upon the leviathan. It certainly could be less depending on how many ships the Forlorn are prepared to lose to get here. Typically though, they are never in a rush so I would think a few months.
“Assuming that they don’t simply try to outright destroy the ship, you might survive a few days after they board us. And yes, I saw how impressive you were, but this will be a fully equipped Forlorn task force, not some aberrant splinter group.
“As to why, Jay, remember that the stronger the parents the stronger the offspring. S’vanth is not blind; he knows who is the strongest here.”
“So, wait. Jay is supposed to knock up one hundred different girls, repeatedly and somehow produce fifty boys. Even if he agrees, hell even if we agree, there isn’t enough time,” Mia said.
“Yes, I realize this and I am sure that S’vanth does too. I expect that he would allow us to accelerate the gestation periods again. Our models suggest that we can bring it down to about four weeks, but even that would still make it quite a challenge. It would require pretty much the entire female population to be involved. Any shorter gestation would risk permanent damage to your offspring,” D’varn said.
“There aren’t even one hundred women in this cluster, let alone on Team Jay,” Amelia pointed out.
“Again, I already realized this. If Jay agrees to this and starts to act upon it, I am sure that S’vanth will start to relax the controls and for example would allow me to merge clusters seven and eight in with yours. Neither have any men in them and that would provide sixty more females.
“Either way you will need to make a decision soon. I am sad to say that I do not see any way around this. S’vanth is smart enough to have already protected himself against any attack that you might muster. So this is likely the only way for you to save your race, but only if you act quickly enough.”
“What about the sleepers? We found them on the fifth floor,” Jay asked. He hadn’t wanted to reveal the information in public now but he needed to get a reaction from D’varn.
“Yes that was a backup plan. Those are samples that we have collected over the last six thousand of your years. But surely you can see that they are not the solution to your problems. If you gain control of the ship then you will be able to take them with you,” D’varn replied.
“Yes, we are no longer the same thing that they are. I will give you an answer in two days. But we need access to the sixth floor so that we can then move on to the other floors and keep leveling up. There were no quests on the fifth floor, so can you tell us what we need to do in order to get through to the sixth?” Jay asked.
He was obviously tense as he asked this. Their home had just been attacked. Jay felt a powerful n
eed to provide safety for the girls and his children. That was what had not been provided to him and homicidal aliens or not, Jay intended to make his children feel safe.
Again D’varn paused before finally saying, “He won’t like it but yes that is within my authority. The fifth floor is just an incubator for the ones you called sleepers. Geothermal energy is used to maintain the stasis pods. There is an exit to the sixth floor inside the volcano but you will have to get past the guardian. This now concludes the time I have allotted for this. I will meet you on the sixth floor in one week and you can give me your decision. Though, if you are going to comply I would urge you to begin showing signs of it before that.”
With that, the hover pod was gone. Jay sensed the surge of energy but it was different from his PSI energy. Still in some way the A’snkarnt had teleported away. It was technology that was worth learning about. For now though he had a number of women staring at him as though he had all the answers.
Sora walked forward and said, “While you two were talking, I checked the leaderboard. It has updated since the stimulant change this morning and there have already been a large number of deaths among some of the other clusters. The death rate had slowed lately but now it is accelerating again. We need to come up with a way to help the others.”
She then projected the screen up for everyone to see.
Leader Board:
M: 13
F: 336
C: 215 (V: 13*?*)
Cluster 1- Jay: Level 109 (M2, F90, C28)
First to complete Floor 4- (Rank 1)
Cluster Completion of Floor 4: 100% (Rank 1)
Leader Level Increase: 295% (Rank 1)
Cluster Average Level Increase: 406% (Rank 1)
Bonus Stat Development: 91 members- significant (Rank 1)
Survival Rate: 90% (Rank 1)
Cluster Skill Development: 104% (Rank 1)
Skill Combo Development: 102% (Rank 1)
Scientific Development: 4845% (Rank 1)
Leader Mating Frequency: 12/day (Rank 1)
Overall Mating Frequency: 20/day (Rank 3rd)
Leader Mating Diversity: 64.8% (Rank 6th)
Overall Mating Diversity: 98.9% (Rank 6th)
Breeding Success: 30.7% (Rank 8th)
Cluster 2- Li Wei: Level 71 (M3, F54, C56)
Cluster 3- Michael: Level 68 (M2, F49, C30)
Cluster 4- Aroon: Level 57 (M2, F45, C30)
Cluster 5- Jeff: Level: 56 (M2, F38, C28)
Cluster 6- Lars: Level 51 (M2, F29, C29)
Cluster 7- Cecelia: Level 69 (F31, C8)
Cluster 8- Trudi: Level 62 (F29, C6)
Current Stimulant Level: 6th threshold, low
At current mortality rate: predicted total collapse of species will occur within 418 days.
At current mortality rate: predicted total loss of all M test subjects within X days.
When any cluster reaches a low enough population to merge with another cluster without exceeding 100 test subjects, said merger will occur within 2 hours of reaching the relevant population levels.
Minimum population in a cluster is 25. This may be modified.
Priority shall be given to adding the failed populations to the highest rank population available.
Current Threshold %
3rd- M- 4, F- 196 (Your Cluster: 0/0)
4th- M- 7, F - 104 (Your Cluster: 0/54)
5th- M- 1, F- 36 (Your Cluster: 1/36)
6th- M- 1, F- 0 (Your Cluster: 1/0)
She was clearly right. Jay had largely ignored the leader board. He had enough to worry about and so was trying to learn not to focus on the things he couldn’t affect. It had taken him a long time to get to this point, but now he wondered if he was missing out on things he needed to know.
It dawned on him though that this was what he had advisors for. He would just need to make sure that one of them was paying attention to the leaderboard. Actually, he had no doubt that Trina was monitoring it. She was very detail-oriented like that. Regardless, he now felt the weight of those other lives pressing in.
Again Jay felt the eyes of everyone on him. “Everyone, we will have to meet to discuss our plans. For now I need to stretch my muscles. I can now take six people with me in my party since I passed the sixth threshold. So, wives and counselors, you can decide who is going with me, but I plan to confront this guardian and get us access to the sixth floor.” Jay then streaked away at top speed. He knew his wives, especially those he was fused with, would be able to follow him, but for now he needed to clear his head.
Interlude 3- Liking What She Sees
Jasmine shook her head as she lost connection with the last of her drones. The spider-like climbers had performed even better than she had anticipated. Their true strength was not in their power as individuals but as a swarm that could be coordinated better than any human arm. But she had to admit that all the tramps were stronger than she had anticipated.
It bothered her. From the data that she had available, they should not have been able to progress so quickly. Of course there was an explanation. Jay had done something to them.
She couldn’t help but quiver in anger at the thought that he was putting his hands on them. He was meant to be hers. He would be hers. He just didn’t know it yet. Still, she was proud of her man, the one destined to rule next to her.
He had made even those weaklings into a powerful fighting force. But what really thrilled her was watching him in action. Jay had been a force to be reckoned with. The way he cut through even the juggernauts was impressive.
She felt almost an ecstasy in remembering what she had seen about him. It was just like the voice that spoke to her in dreams, her own voice, had told her. He was simply gorgeous and powerful, a god amongst mortals. The emotions and desire surged so strongly within her that the drones around her were left lying on the ground as drooling messes as her unconscious emotional projections temporarily overloaded them. Best of all she got the sample she had wanted.
One other thing that bothered her was that one of the A’snkarnt had been there. He didn’t help in the fight. According to the Forlorn data she had and even what she had been able to recover from this massive ship they were on, told her that was not their way. They were thinkers not doers. That only incensed her more.
She had been wondering if there were other A’snkarnt left on the ship. There had been the encounter with the one named S’vanth. He thought to order her around, acted as though they were allies. Jasmine had been glad to cure him of those delusions and send him fleeing for his life.
This one was not the same as the other. She got the sense that he was working with the other humans. That might be a problem. She would need to up her efforts to find more of the human hiding spots. Surely the others would be easier to harvest and with the information she had received from the future, she could make more powerful creations from any humans that she captured now. Jasmine looked forward to the screams.
13- Heavy is the Head
When Jay reached his place of solitude, he sat down, back to the cliff wall, and began to think about what had happened today. Being back over at the wall made him realize that the enemy he had shoved into the wall had never returned. At the time, he had been too worried about Trina, but this was just another reminder that he truly was not a warrior. He was just some history major with a crappy home life, trying to stumble through the best he could.
He reached out and scanned the area with as much power as he could muster. There wasn’t anything that he sensed on the third floor. Even the breach in the decking of the leviathan which constituted their sky was apparently repaired.
With no immediate threat, that let Jay fall into thinking about what he was supposed to do. How could he turn over babies to be essentially lobotomized and turned into slaves? He felt like he was being asked to deal with those little snake-like creatures from that sci-fi show he watched as a kid. He and his dad hadn’t shared much in common but an appreciation for older sci-fi was one of them.
&
nbsp; Just as much as he couldn’t turn over babies to monsters, he also couldn’t allow the human race to die. He took D’varn’s warnings seriously and had no doubt that if an army of Forlorn descended upon them that it would be, good night sweet prince. Oh sure he might survive for a while but today had again proven that all of them were at some level susceptible to the weapons, which he had taken to thinking of as a type of disruptor.
So if he wasn’t going to turn over babies and he couldn’t defeat the Forlorn once they boarded the ship that left only one option. He needed to find a way to seize control of the leviathan. The presence of the sleepers made it a moral imperative that he gain control of it anyway.
It was a subtle but important shift in his mind on two different planes. First he was done trying to figure out a way to escape. He would have the tech division stop working on anything like spaceships etc.… All efforts needed to go towards gaining control.