by Norman Oro
Domain
Within a month, the Supreme Council established the Thant Center, which was dedicated to finding a cure to the sickness. Prime’s most brilliant scientists quickly volunteered their services and the council endowed it with a practically unlimited budget. Soon thereafter, the government created the office of targeting envoy, which would have the final say on all matters related to extinguishing races. Elections for the post would take place once a millennium and only a unanimous vote from the fifteen-person Supreme Council could override it decisions.
To identify worlds to extinguish, the Grell placed the productive capacity of almost their entire civilization at the envoy’s disposal. Eventually millions of probes and scouting teams were displaced to every corner of the galaxy, looking and listening for any hint of sentient activity. They found no shortage of candidates for extinction and harnessing their ever strengthening shared consciousness, the envoy went about methodically silencing world after world. Generally, the Grell targeted races that posed a threat to others since they almost inevitably extinguished themselves anyway. With time, they also found younger species easier prey than older ones, which often had developed abilities that allowed them to resist extinction. Nevertheless, every race the envoy targeted did eventually fall. Their emptied homeworlds in turn served as silent monuments to those dead civilizations, and became part of an expanding sphere of power radiating out from Prime, the Grell Domain.
Despite the transformation their society had undergone, the Grell never stopped trying to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. Though they believed they hadn’t changed, that hope and piety still held sway in their heart of hearts, there was no denying they’d become a race of predators. More troubling still, as the millennia passed, they increasingly found references to themselves in the civilizations they targeted for extinction. In their myths and legends, the Grell were startled to find that the villain, the indescribable monster, the ineffable thing that frightened people into rectitude or rained down punishment upon them for misdeeds almost invariably had alabaster hair and eyes of pure obsidian. Although the Grell had never left any survivors to attest to their existence, somehow the universe had learned of them; and over time, across scores of civilizations, they’d come to embody Death itself, harbingers of a terrible wrath.
For a people who once took pride in their compassion and piety, finding themselves depicted in those stories only deepened their already profound dismay at what they’d become. Many Grell continued to be at a loss in finding God’s hand in what had befallen them and in what they did. They privately believed that millennia earlier, they’d simply chosen incorrectly, that they as a species and everyone else would’ve been better off had they let the sickness consume them. Better to murder one race, themselves, than the thousands they’d since silenced.
Most Grell, however, found that view too extreme. Instead they saw themselves as a mechanism for hastening the inevitable. With a knowledge that spanned innumerable civilizations, the Grell had grown adept at identifying worlds that were prone to extinguishing themselves. By their hand, the argument went, those deaths at least wouldn’t go completely to waste. For most, that was good enough. And so it went for millennia. Newly tested world after newly tested world fell and the Grell thrived. Three dozen millennia later, their domain encompassed over two hundred fifty billion people spread across forty-two planets and fourteen solar systems.
By that time, their science had progressed exponentially with respect to what came to be known as Grossveld energy and the sickness that accompanied it. Though a cure still proved elusive, scientists at the Thant Center discovered ways to delay its onset. An extinction that would have originally staved off the death without death on Prime for only a year inoculated the entire Domain for a half century. Despite such advances, Grell scientists took pains to warn against presuming too much. Although there’d never been a shortage of races to target in the past, there was no guarantee it would stay that way in the future.
It was that sense of uncertainty that propelled the Domain onward to find ever more species to kill even as memories of the sickness faded into antiquity. It was also the driving force behind the envoy’s decision to launch expeditions into the Steppe, a region of space rumored to be teeming with species on the brink of being tested. The Grell immediately dispatched their cadres of probes and advance scouts to gather as much information about the races there as possible. Their behavioral scientists then sifted through the data looking for markers that identified civilizations that were highly susceptible to extinguishing themselves. They were excited to find that over ninety percent of the races there exhibited the characteristics they sought. It was arguably the envoy’s finest hour. Thousands of worlds destined for self-extinction, promising ages of freedom from the sickness, lay before the Grell; and all they had to do was wait then attack.
As the millennia passed, however, the Domain’s scientists found that something had gone wrong. All those thousands of races in the Steppe had somehow changed their behavioral trajectories. Rather than gliding inexorably towards self-extinction, revised forecasts predicted that practically every race they were monitoring would easily survive being tested. In all its ages of existence, it was the most baffling anomaly the envoy’s office had ever encountered.
When the time came for the Grell’s newly elected envoy, Pret Zin, to notify the global consciousness of his list of targets, he confessed that they appeared to have underestimated the races in the Steppe. His behavioral scientists had grown certain that none of them would perish during testing. As difficult as it was to do given the vast number of worlds there and the time they’d spent watching them, he believed the best course of action was to move on. There were many races outside the Steppe that his office believed would go on to extinguish themselves and he intended to target them instead.
Although he had the sympathies of practically everyone within the Domain, the thought of not having to worry about sickness for a near eternity proved too enticing. In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Council overrode his decision. The targeting would remain unchanged. Before Envoy Zin readied himself to execute the council’s directive, he gave his customary address to the global consciousness. It was a very terse statement simply asking the Grell to remember who they once were.
As Pret donned his encounter suit within his command chamber, he thought he felt the faintest of kisses upon his cheek. Against all reason, he looked around, expecting to see his wife, Alma. However, he only saw that he was alone. Soon he displaced himself onto Shiva, the first of the worlds targeted within the Steppe to have fallen under the throes of the Test. He materialized in a plaza in Gaul, Shiva’s greatest city, then strode forward past a crowd of onlookers. After a few steps, he stopped and knelt at the feet of a little boy. Pret put his right hand on the boy’s head, looked into his eyes then gently said,
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In an instant, the city of Gaul and the planet on which it stood were empty of people.
Envoy Zin performed his ritual on thousands of worlds in the Steppe just as his predecessors had since time immemorial. It was through his eyes that the collective established the visual contact it needed in order to kill. One planet at a time, he rendered that region of the galaxy which once teemed with life barren; and as his second term drew to a close, the Grell stood to be free of sickness for almost a million years. Even to a race of immortals, that was an awe inspiring length of time. Whenever his people tried to hail him as the greatest of all their envoys, he was quick to carefully remind them that he originally planned to leave the Steppe and stood by that decision. Nonetheless, the Grell couldn’t help but credit him with effectively freeing them from the death without death.
It was during the closing centuries of Pret’s final term that rumors began surfacing of an alliance of worlds, which was said to also number well into the thousands. Buoyed by their harvest in the Steppe, the Grell were abuzz at the prospect of claiming yet another prize. Envoy Zin forcefully remind
ed them that they were free of sickness for practically an eternity. Also, the worlds they spoke of were almost certainly tested already. Aside from the obvious ethical issues, Domain efforts against them would therefore likely face intense resistance. Given what he’d done for his people and his popularity, the Supreme Council didn’t dare challenge him and so talk of extinguishing the Alliance went silent.
Nemesis
When Pret’s term ended, he wished his people well and faded once again into obscurity with his wife, Alma. To succeed him, the Grell chose Klem Procter, a brilliant scholar, who once headed Envoy Zin’s behavioral sciences group. Just years into his new term, rumors of the Alliance began swirling anew; and like his predecessor, Envoy Procter urged caution. Though the Grell had never been defeated, that didn’t mean they were invincible. On the contrary, he argued that their success largely stemmed from their prudence, from not overextending themselves. Just as importantly, he also noted that they had hundreds of thousands of years to look forward to free of illness, which virtually eliminated the need to take on any risk. His well-reasoned calls for moderation, however, fell largely on deaf ears.
Though they would’ve been the last to admit it, the Grell had grown fond of the hunt; and their millennia of unbroken success had slowly eroded the prudence that once characterized them. In addition, many argued that such an alliance, if it did exist, would one day pose a threat to the Domain and should therefore be eliminated. Egged on by the disparate voices calling for the Alliance’s extinction, the Supreme Council ultimately mustered the votes it needed to override Envoy Procter. However, rather than execute a directive that he believed would be the undoing of his people, he tendered his resignation. The council responded by installing a series of regents to carry out its instructions until a new election could be held. Soon millions of Grell probes and scouts were displaced into the periphery of what was rumored to be Alliance space.
As its agents peered remotely into one global consciousness after another and as its probes materialized to monitor world after countless world, the Domain grew inexorably closer to its prey. It was on a mining planet where the search finally ended. There, a probe detected an unknown sentient through its visual scanner. Ironically, it at first seemed to be a Grell. The same white hair covered his head; however, upon closer inspection, his eyes weren’t obsidian, but rather a pearl-white. As the Domain sliced into the being’s link to his collective, the Grell learned he was a Tessite. The regent at the time, Nadia Steel, then displaced herself to the Tessite homeworld to carry out her ritual. However, seconds after the planet went silent as her inhabitants disappeared into the void of space, they reappeared unharmed. Slightly vexed, she immediately harnessed the Grell collective to have the Tessites displace themselves once again, this time into their sun. Without explanation, she then received a distress summons from Prime.
Forced to relinquish the Domain’s link to the Tessite collective, she materialized to find her windowed command chamber unusually dim. Looking up through its translucent roof, she immediately saw why. Celestia, Prime’s sun, was changing color. Her chief scientist then hurriedly gave her sensor readings indicating that it was somehow aging at a massively accelerated rate. Just as she realized what was happening, Prime was engulfed in solar fire. Soon similar reports streamed in from systems all over the Domain, each time ushering into the Grell collective a wave of searing pain followed by an almost deafening silence. Something that hadn’t been felt since their darkest days after the Test then began coursing through every Grell heart: Fear. Without a regent or council, the Domain lay paralyzed before the Alliance counterattack. After what seemed like an eternity, a familiar presence started asserting itself within the global consciousness, demanding to be heard. It was Pret Zin.
He was immediately designated regent and handed control of the Grell collective. Regent Zin then ordered what remained of the envoy’s scientific corps to search the memories retained from the Tessites for the race that could’ve done what they’d witnessed. As if snapped out of a trance, they began rifling through billions of memory fragments until a name appeared. They were called the Kek.
From an asteroid serving as the Domain’s emergency headquarters, Pret took hold of the location for the planet Tol and displaced himself there. He materialized to find arrayed before him a vast legion of warriors, all standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their heads bowed silently in deep concentration. In an instant, a group of them were roused and turned their eyes towards him. From the looks on their faces, they’d have none of his ritual that day. Instead, with impossible speed, they closed their distance to him and began cutting into the shielding of his encounter suit. Just as he felt their metal stab into his ribcage, he displaced himself to safety. Despite heavy resistance slicing into their collective, within an hour, the Kek homeworld began growing old. Regent Zin looked on from his battle chamber as he aged Tol into a rock as barren as the one from which he ruled the remnants of the Domain.
As he pressed forward with the Grell offensive, Pret’s scientists began searching through the memories absorbed from the Kek. Being the defenders of the Alliance, they likely held the locations, abilities and populations of every Ally. What they found instead was a garbled, nearly unintelligible mess. Even after hours of effort, the coordinates they pieced together amounted to little more than a series of guesses. Nevertheless, it was just enough. Soon advanced scouts began materializing throughout the Alliance. However, the Grell could find no trace of life for the envoy to slice into. All they found was a silence rivaling the one inflicted on them by the Kek.
Wondering whether it was a ruse, Pret ordered the teleportation of millions of heavily-armed shock troops onto every Allied world. It had been ages since they’d engaged in actual physical combat, but they’d trained rigorously for just that contingency. Regent Zin quickly donned a new encounter suit then displaced himself to the head of the main battle group assembled on Halcyon.
He materialized in the Allied capital, Ohnz, to find a city eerily reminiscent of a place from his distant past. From the shape of the buildings to the lake it surrounded to the silence that pervaded its every street corner, everything conjured up memories of an Ehdl that hadn’t existed in dozens of millennia. And just like that city from Pret’s ancient memories, its immense avenues were utterly still. However, it wasn’t because of disease. Rather, all along Ohnz’s sidewalks, its inhabitants lay with looks of such utter tranquility that at first, he thought they were asleep or unconscious. His medical team soon assured him otherwise. As he heard his battle groups report in, they all spoke of the same thing, corpses lying in perfect repose as far as their eyes could see. Rather than surrendering their Grossveld energy to the Domain, it appeared that every single person within the Alliance, trillions of beings strong, had taken their own life. Awed by such an act and by the people who’d carry it out, Pret immediately ordered that not a hair on any Alliance citizen be touched until they were given a proper burial.
An hour later, he materialized in his command chamber to find situation reports waiting for him. Of the Domain’s forty-two homeworlds, thirty-nine had been incinerated, taking with them over two hundred thirty billion Grell, as well as their sacred homeworlds, Prime and Gem. Large swaths of what remained were heavily damaged by quantum charges with essentials such as electricity and running water unavailable on two of the three remaining homeworlds. In fact, it was just through luck that he and Alma happened to be vacationing on Praxis, the only Grell world spared during the Kek offensive. After a day of mourning across the Domain, Pret began overseeing a process that he’d gotten to know all too well during his long life: Rebuilding. During his centuries as regent, he worked tirelessly to lay the foundation for what he hoped would be a stronger and wiser Domain. Once a new Supreme Council was elected and he felt confident that his duties had been fulfilled, Pret respectfully turned down calls to seek another term as envoy; and Indra Blake, one of his people’s greatest scientists, was eventually chosen.
Envo
y Blake and her successors assiduously continued the work Pret had begun. It took the Grell almost a dozen millennia to fully recover from their encounter with the Alliance. Only those who’d survived retained their freedom from the sickness. Those born afterwards had to rely on the envoy to continue staving off the death without death. Nevertheless, the Grell population eventually began expanding once again, ultimately taking up nearly a hundred planets in two dozen solar systems. However, as Pret had hoped, things had fundamentally changed. The new Domain once again embraced the cardinal virtues of prudence, hope and piety, swearing to never again lose sight of them.
A Cure
Of their virtues, it was hope most of all that sustained the Grell’s search for a remedy to their condition. Three hundred millennia after the Test, scientists at the Thant Center cautiously announced their discovery of a possible cure. After researching the innumerable races the Domain had encountered, they believed that exposure to a very specific permutation of Grossveld energy would render the sickness permanently inert. Unfortunately, the field energy their theoretical models predicted would cure them didn’t exist in any known species and couldn’t be synthesized. Instead, an actual sentient had to generate it; and the ability to genetically engineer such a being was far beyond even their science. Although the odds were daunting, the envoy’s evolutionary biologists and mathematicians believed that chance alone would eventually produce such a race if it hadn’t already. Indeed, with each passing millennium, they found that the species they considered for extinction came closer and closer to generating the type of Grossveld energy they needed.