The Zygote Crystal

by Ashley Thomas

  Bang goes the box

  With a ginormous crash and cracking sound, the box split asunder. As it did a large cloud of dust ‘surrounded’ where it had been, almost as if the box had disintegrated. I stared at the dust cloud as did everyone else in the room, including Yakh and Ulth. As the dust slowly settled and the air cleared I saw a shadowy figure begin to take shape where the box and then dust cloud had been. My eyes widened as the figure stood tall and then taller still. At least 2.5 metres I’d say.

  My neck lifted my head upwards to stare at the top of the figure. I wasn’t at all sure what I was looking at but it was an impressive overall sight. Covered in black fur, standing on two legs, with two similarly fur covered arms by its sides, it seemed to me as though it might be a very big cat. Additional clues to support my conclusion included a couple of pointy ears on each side of the head and a very animated thick black tail hanging down to the floor from behind.

  I sensed safety as I stared at the eyes of the being before me, despite the fact that I could see flashes of very impressive fangs between the slightly parted lips of its mouth. Sweeping out from each side of the mouth were what had to be whiskers, incredibly thick, long and as animated towards their ends as the thick black tail seemed to be. Completing the impressive visage before me were claws the length of daggers and the thickness of an average person’s finger. As the figure looked at me I knew in an instant that I was looking at my Cat. Goodness, how he had grown!

  Giant Cat

  As I wondered how he had grown into whatever he now was, Giant Cat proceeded to encourage Yakh and Ulth to give up, using quite ‘final’ methods. First, his impressive tail flicked majestically out towards the larger Mud Lizard, a little like a Mud Lizard tongue flicks out. However, this was ‘majestic flicking’ as opposed to that ‘gloopy drool like flicking’ that Mud Lizards specialised in.

  Large Mud Lizard was dragged in an instant by Giant Cat’s tail to within reach of giant Cat’s fearsome claws and I gasped, as the top of the Mud Lizard’s body literally exploded when the claws raked across, in and up the unfortunate creature. As this happened, Mini decided to try to leg it, though I’m not entirely sure any legs were actually involved. It didn’t really matter however whether legs were involved or not as within the blink of an eye, Mini was being bludgeoned repeatedly against the hard floor by one of Giant Cat’s mega whiskers that had lassoed Mini around its rotund middle. Eventually Mini was released, and it lay motionless on the floor as its formerly impressive tongue slowly slid out of the now open, gaping mouth. Whilst I was glad to see that our ordeal may almost be over, I must confess to being slightly surprised by Giant Cat’s ruthless despatch of Yakh and Ulth.

  As the new dust generated through the rapid destruction of the two Mud Lizards settled, I looked directly again at Giant Cat and realised he hadn’t said anything. I gulped a little as he stood there, strong and quietly regal, looking at me. I found myself thinking I’d made the assumption that what stood before me was Cat, albeit in a remarkably altered form. I hoped I was right. If I wasn’t, I doubted whether I had very long left to contemplate how nice it was to still have the requisite number of human limbs connected to the right areas of my body. Giant Cat strode towards me and waved one arm over me. The bonds holding me relaxed and then disappeared. I was free. Did he prefer his victims to be moving I wondered before he shredded them? No, I realised, as he performed a similar trick for Joosthava and Krokus and then walked back over to where the Zygote Crystal was placed.

  He grabbed the Crystal in his arms and literally melted into its shape. The Zygote Crystal hovered there for a brief moment in front of us, before its centre emitted a light that was strangely both bright and dark. It then disappeared into thin air.

  Chapter 9 – Going Home Without Him

  What just happened?

  With Cat gone, Krokus Joe, Joosthava and I, released from our bonds, initially said little to each other. To say we were in shock would be an understatement.

  Joosthava did some checking, as best she could, using monitoring devices aboard the eMDaDD, but could pick up no trace of Cat. We waited for several days, just in case, but he did not re-appear either in his original or ‘giant’ form. We encountered the Jurassic Mud Lizards a few days after the Zygote Crystal and Cat had disappeared. They helped us to look for him but to no avail. We then found, when we returned to the eMDaDD on one day after looking for Cat, an aircast he had left that gave us most of the story with just a few gaps that we had to fill in.

  Cat’s aircast

  Cat prefaced the aircast with a warning that what we were about to hear was information that very few humans knew, though Joosthava would be aware of some of the facts. As such, both Krokus and I were sworn to absolute secrecy.

  The aircast explained that Cat was indeed a direct descendent of Azz-Lex who was the Leader of the so-called GoGLEs. The aircast went on to explain that the GoGLEs were Guardians of Galaxy Life Evolution and that they lived on Planet X, beneath the clouds and mists that covered that planet’s surface. Originally the GoGLEs had lived on Earth but had eventually left during the Triassic Period, with 4 Zygote Crystals that Azz-Lex had created and which were used periodically in different parts of the Universe to stimulate evolutionary step changes.

  To say I was shocked by this would be the understatement of the 23rd Century. I could barely speak. All these years that I thought I'd been working as an Intergalactic Tax Inspector with a robot Cat helper, I’d actually been acting as ‘cover’ for the anti-Mud Lizard activities of a near-God.

  “Wow,” I said to Joosthava and Krokus “I always thought the rubber tincan looked down on me. Now I know he probably had every right to.”

  “Oh no,” said Joosthava, “I don't believe he looked down on you. I know he liked you and was very fond of you, even though you sometimes used an unusual approach to re-booting his system.”

  “That was always for his own good I can assure you!” I said before adding, “And did you notice the aircast says there are 4 of these Zygote Crystals? I wonder where the other 3 are, never mind the one that took Giant Cat?”

  “Hopefully, they are all now safely on Planet X,” responded Joosthava.

  The aircast had also explained how the Jurassic Mud Lizards had come to possess a Zygote Crystal in the first place. Apparently, all 4 Zygote Crystals have a permanent chaperone, a so called Geminate, who goes everywhere a crystal does to oversee and control its use. Each of the 4 crystals has a name and the one taken to Jurassic Earth by the Geminate known as Scorm, was the Endurance crystal.

  Whilst on Jurassic Earth, Scorm was to identify a species that would Accevolve and ultimately survive the Chicxulub Impactor. However something happened to Scorm whilst he was on his mission and he basically decided to become the Mud Lizard leader, after assuming their shape and form. He planned ultimately to leave Earth with the Jurassic Mud Lizards to start a new life away from Planet X forever. However, he was the ‘Mud Lizard’ elder killed by Yakh and Ulth on their early time vaults to Jurassic Earth. That is how the Endurance Zygote Crystal effectively became ‘orphaned’, and for a long time remained hidden, even from the remaining GoGLEs on Planet X.

  GoGLEs and Mud Lizards

  The GoGLEs on Planet X had watched the development of the Mud Lizards after they settled on Plasmolidium with some interest, noting at some point the marked change in their formerly benign character. Whilst they did not wish to interfere too often in conflicts that arose across the Universe, they had quickly recognised the Mud Lizard ruthlessness and intent to conquer all. With Earth the principal target of the Mud Lizards, the GoGLEs felt compelled, as former inhabitants, to intervene. Azz-Lex had therefore come to Earth himself in 2170 to provide Earth with a cure for the Mosquito virus. He then helped Earth in two additional ways to combat future Mud Lizard threats.

  First off he provided a clone of his DNA for the creation of Cat, so that Cat could be a guardian for Earth, marshalling responses to any future Mud Lizard threats. Second, he subseq
uently provided additional genetic material which was eventually used to produce Joosthava. That genetic material imbued her with the time vaulting capabilities needed to investigate and combat the Mud Lizard plans to regain the Zygote Crystal through time travel and use it in the 23rd Century.

  So we knew it all now pretty much. Though not in the aircast, we assumed that Giant Cat could not go back to being ‘my’ Cat. We also assumed and hoped that he was probably safely ensconced with the Endurance Zygote Crystal and Azz-Lex on Planet X.

  I did of course ask Joosthava about our options to use time travel again to bring him back but she ruled that out. Her argument was the same as previously, when I had suggested this on our return to Messier 31 from Jurassic Earth, that it would be too risky to interfere with past events in this particular case. There was always the chance, by inadvertently doing something when in the past, that we could negatively impact the future we now had and which had given Earth safety from Mud Lizards. So, once again I was without him and my heart felt it. My chest felt full of my heart and my mind was just a mass of disjointed, funny but painful memories.

  Going home

  We got back to our own time quite easily and I was now generally alone in my apartment on a period of extended leave. Krokus had gone back to time mining on Messier 31 and Joosthava back to her research. Joosthava came to see me periodically, often at the weekends. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do without him or indeed what HQ would be expecting me to do in the future. Then, one quiet weekday afternoon I received an urgent aircast from the Director requesting my immediate attendance at HQ. I left as soon as I could by hovercar.

  I was greeted as usual by the Director’s avatar, 24Seven, and then I noticed that Joosthava and Krokus were in the waiting area. When I was asked to go through to the Director’s office they followed behind me.

  “Good morning Tom. How are you? I hope you have recovered from the ordeal on Plasmolidium?” enquired the Director.

  I smiled and said “Yes, I am a lot better thank you.” We sat down in chairs in front of the Director who was seated at his PiXL desk. The Director continued to speak.

  “You may be pleased to learn we have received a communication and package that we believe has come from Cat on Planet X.”

  My heart lifted as I sat forward in my chair and said “So he is alive. Is he coming back?”

  “From the sound of it, he cannot come back,” responded the Director.

  My heart promptly sank as I realised I was not going to see my buddy again. “What else does the message from him tell us?” I enquired.

  “Well,” said the Director, “There are two important parts to his message. First off, and most importantly, there are other threats heading towards Earth from parts of the Universe we would not expect. Cat has therefore advised we formally create a team here to monitor and combat these. I am therefore, at his suggestion, establishing you, Joosthava and Krokus as our Monitoring of Alien Threats and Response Squad (MoATaRS).”

  I was slightly alarmed at this news, and especially at use of words like ‘threat’ and ‘response’ neither of which were favourites of mine. I much preferred ‘safety’ to ‘threat’ and ‘do-nothing’ to ‘response’. Accordingly I rather weakly said, “But I’m a tax inspector, not a threat eliminator.”

  The Director smiled at me and said “No need to keep up your cover with me Tom, Cat kept me fully briefed on your acts of bravery and self-sacrifice.”

  Oh my, I thought. Here were some more words he was using that really made the sweat pearls appear on the palms of my hands. I mean, I know Cat was my buddy and I missed him, but I did rather think the rubberised tin can robot might have been winding both the Director up, and ultimately me, with his tales of my derring-do.

  So, to sum up, in the absence of my main protector, Cat, I was now going to be leading the MoATaRS. Oh boy, was that a stupid name or what? Whatever, it sounded like we were now destined to meet and deal with the plots and associated dangers visited upon Earth by other aliens in addition to the Mud Lizards. Whilst I processed this ‘not’ excellent news, I asked the Director what the second part of Cat’s message was.

  A dangerous weapon…..

  “Actually,” said the Director in response, the second part of the message is actually the package I mentioned.”

  The Director stood up, reached down to the floor behind him and picked up a SustiPak, which was about the size of a small table. He passed the SustiPak over to me and as I gripped it I felt something moving inside. I put the SustiPak down on the Director’s desk and unzipped the top flaps. I saw two bright eyes staring back at me, as I looked into the box. I reached my hands in and felt warm furriness surrounding a small soft body. I lifted the ‘warm furriness’ up and out of the box into the full light of the room and looked upon a black kitten, just like Cat, but obviously a lot smaller. I looked at the Director with a slightly puzzled expression and he smiled back saying,

  “Cat thought you might appreciate one of his offspring. This is a new concept in living robot technology. Part organic, part machine of course, Rubanon coated and controlled by Cat’s full genome. This kitten will grow into your new companion and protector. With this new approach to AIs, you get the opportunity to develop this robot through its formative growth years. This AI is more organic than Cat ever was and exhibits most of the normal biological functions that a normal domestic cat does. When fully grown it will also be armed with sophisticated weaponry. In the meantime, whilst it grows to maturity, enjoy this small bundle of joy that has been produced in your former protector’s image.”

  I must confess I was a little apprehensive. The thought of a fully grown Cat clone with sophisticated weaponry worried me slightly. Mind you, on the other hand I had always thought that a lack of weaponry in Cat had too often led us into sticky situations, which could have been avoided had he had the odd blaster or vaporiser built into his robotic part. I would of course have to be more thoughtful should the need ever arise in the future to re-boot my new companion. I am not sure I would have ever used the ‘boot in the butt’ approach to unfreezing Cat’s operating system if he had had access to real weapons. I wondered if this new Cat clone would be able to remember anything that used to happen to his Rubanon ancestor?

  I raised the small bundle of fur higher into the air, my hands under its front shoulders, above my head to get a good look at it and see if I could really discern Cat’s features in the new arrival. Its back legs and tail dangled down as I looked up at it, chest and small belly pointing at me.

  I saw the arc of urine that came squirting from its lower end too late to avoid getting it full in the face. As remarkably smelly and salty fluid excrement ran down my forehead and cheeks, I thought, ‘yes, this is definitely one of Cat’s offspring and it’s already armed and dangerous’.