by Lee Bond
And from there? Well. He was a Bruushian Warlord. Perhaps –given the nature of his kinds’ imprisonment- the only one left free in all of Existence. Control, conquer, command. That was inscribed on his very DNA. It was why his people had come through the void as they had the second time, after all.
Unlike the Shattered Dominion, this Unreal Universe was rife with power, ripe with energy. Enough … more than enough … to oust the M’Zahdi Hesh from their seat at the head of the table.
And yet …
“Why don’t you? I dream of blood and food. We should do that.”
“This Universe is coming to an end, child.” No matter how many times he said it, the words sounded … odd. The meaning of those words was … nearly overwhelming. Faced with eternal destruction unless power was gained to stave off Entropy, most beings capable of sustaining themselves in the Shattered Dominion very clearly understood what it meant to be that close to non-existence on a regular basis.
If you were good at what you did –as were the Bruush- you could live for trillions of years, as the Bruush had. But one small misstep, one incorrect calculation, and Mother Entropy would swarm down upon you and all would be lost. Andros had seen it. Had witnessed ‘stable’ Dominions knitted together to provide protection and growth torn asunder in seconds, the very essence of their existence funneled back from whence it’d come.
But here? The Unreal Universe? It was grander and vaster and nigh on infinite. It was both humbling and humiliating for someone from the Dominions to see such a thing existing. They’d all of them imagined that with the destruction of their Universe that no other would come, that the partial or full worlds appearing within the Dominions were nothing more than failed attempts at Universal resurrection.
So wrong. So very wrong.
To even imagine that something like the Unreal Universe could come to a screeching halt was more than enough to make the most ancient Tr’ss T’aa Nihaaq S’strss feel … microscopic.
“How is that possible? I am learning to read these … files … in these … computers. The size of this place is …”
“Vast. I know.” Andros nodded, ignored the piteous shrieks as more organic material was forcibly transformed into inorganic compounds. He was neutering his child. Removing the ability to alter himself to meet any incoming threat, and he feared the boy knew it. “There is a man. A man I need to find, who can return us to where we belong. He is … he’s planned for the destruction of the Universe, my son. Because from where he stands, what has been happening in this glorious, wild Existence is unkind. Unfair and unkind.”
“Sounds like a man we should kill, father. A man capable of thinking like that is beyond a danger. Kill him, stop the destruction, then we can consume this place, make it our own, make it like the haunting red echoes in my soul.”
The mere notion of killing Garth N’Chalez made Andros uncomfortable. If the hints –fed to him by Trinity Itself to trick him into action- were true, then the entire Bruushian Horde was trapped behind one of nodes that made The Cordon what it was. And if that were true, then there was only one being in the entire Unreal Universe capable of unlocking it.
That wasn’t the answer you could give to a child hungering for war, though.
“This Universe is destined for destruction either way, my child. There is a species called the M’Zahdi Hesh, and they wait for the same thing as Nickels. And if they fail, there is Trinity Itself. And if It fails, there is undoubtedly something else waiting there in the dark to bring this awful place into the fires. No.” Andros shook his head sadly. “The only place for us, my son, is with the rest of our people. Protected by the thing made by the man we seek. Which is why you must … be as you are becoming.”
“I hate this feeling. I am being closed out, father. Closed out of myself. I should be natural, of stone and bone and flesh and claw and talon and pincer. Not hard and cold and breakable.” His son, the mighty organic ship, moaned low and heavy.
That was the thing, the thing Andros could not get over, the thing that had his majestic brow beetled and his mouth set into a permanent frown. Not the deliberations over who would pick up the mantle of Universal Destroyer should Garth die, should he be captured by the Mycogene assassins even then roaming Trinityspace, but this, his son, moaning and wailing about missing things that he should by no right even know, much less miss.
The Bruushian Warlord knew that his methods were by no means perfect. That they would, if one of those wrinkled old women that reeked of ammonia so severe your nose could start bleeding before a single word came from them, shriek and scream and proclaim him heretic before summoning down death from a million different directions.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Andros demanded bitterly. He only heard his son vaguely; wrapped up in the mystery of uncovering his child’s echoed memories had led him to the one place he’d known he’d wind up.
He was the cause.
Of course he was. How could he not be?
What other choice had been given to him? None, of course. It wasn’t like he could’ve strolled up to Trinity and demanded access to Bruushian DNA, right? Some of that good old-fashioned non-programmed genetic material that was capable of becoming anything you wanted with but a few simple orders? Surely Trinity had it by the boatload. Or perhaps had had it; with the wonders of Bruushian technology finally understood after the mighty and dangerous battle at Tannhauser’s Gate, there was no way the machine mind would’ve simply disposed of any remnants of the antagonists. It was a keeper of mysteries, a plumber of ancient and depths, and It would’ve done whatever It could to unlock the secrets hidden behind that Bruushian power.
“You probably wasted it all, didn’t you, Trinity?” The thought of it made Andros ill to his stomach, forcing the slowly digesting meat within to churn slightly. “Doing everything you could to activate the matter, to cause it to unfurl, to become something you wanted … to think that you used it all up in pointless experiments … gah! But I did the best I could with what I had at hand, and now … my child suffers for it.”
What do you do when you are a Bruushian warlord and you are millions of years old, trapped in a hostile dimension with no access to that which would make you strong again? You turn inward, you force yourself to remember every little thing those sly bitches in the shawls ever mentioned in your presence, you do all it took to view those fleeting glimpses of conversion chambers and the smells of the chemicals used and you use yourself as the genetic template.
Because of course you would do whatever it took. No matter the cost, no matter the risk.
That first ship, the one he’d used to escape from Trinity, it’d hardly had any time to grow and had never –when you got right down to it- been meant to be anything other than an escape pod. It hadn’t had the intelligence or the complexity of the ship Andros stood inside right now, and as a result, it had barely survived the flight from imminent captivity. Certainly none of the genetic matter had remained in a usable state, though the Bruushian had attempted to cultivate some strains anyways, all with remarkable failures.
But when a thing can happen once, it can happen again, and so Andros Medellos planned for a time in the future when Trinity would come to his door once more. The staggering depth of betrayal evinced by the other Cabal Members really and truly did take his breath away every time he contemplated that moment, and Andros genuinely couldn’t tell if he was angry or amazed that Emile and the others had finally shown the kind of staunch backbone that would’ve had him saying ‘yes’ in a second had they shown any hint of it before then.
When he’d begun … growing … this second ship, this better ship, Andros couldn’t have said for certain if the need to flee would’ve stemmed from betrayal, mishap, or Trinity finally doing things properly, he’d just known that if a second need for quick escape would come, it would be the last and final time.
So where that first pod had been … retarded, possessed of only enough intelligence to work the engines and not crash him into the
first planet on the left, his new son, his mighty dragon in the sky … he was everything it meant to be son.
“But I was so careful.” Andros said, almost to himself. Around him, the ship ticked and tocked and made a million other familiar, comforting noises. “I dug and I dug and I dug. I was certain I removed every last shred, every last scrap of genetic memory. No easy feat. Without taking that time, I could’ve had you ready in years instead of decades. But I needed to be certain, and it seems I failed after all.”
The memory of the Bruush was hardwired into every other Bruushian thing. It was how they survived. It was one of the reasons the witches deemed themselves invaluable, untouchable, uncontrollable; they often took time out of their ‘hectic’ lives to remind any available T’aa –never really daring to broach the subject to the Tr’ss unless they were feeling extremely underappreciated and willing to lose a few of their ilk- that it was them and them alone who held the entire existence of the Bruush in their clawed hands.
That they could, any time they chose, simply wipe out an entire branch of the Bruushian hierarchy, just by ‘accidentally’ revising a few strands of code. Any warriors borne from the altered batch would be lucky to wipe their own asses with whatever was to hand, let alone be suffused with instinctual fighting skills learned over hundreds of millions of years.
It was why he’d taken so long, why he’d worked so diligently to make sure that every ancient shred of himself was erased, and rendered neuter, meaningless strands of DNA that bore no meaning on its own but would become something greater.
“What are you talking about?”
Andros’ eyes strayed to the tall cabinet he’d built right here, in the command station, for his personal use. It was –at best- a skin box. There was one on every level, and from it, the skinsuit he’d grown accustomed to wearing over the last few hundred years would be properly laid over his own mighty flesh. Now he was done being a nightmare, he felt … raw.
Naked.
Exposed. He wasn’t entirely second-guessing his actions down below, but what if he’d missed someone, or something, recording his image? Trinity may lack the ability to send Enforcers to any point in the Universe nearly instantaneously, but that didn’t mean the machine mind would flat out ignore a planetary crisis like the one that’d befallen Terrex-33.
“It is just that … you are my son, born of my seed.” Andros admitted slowly as he walked across the white-tiled floor. “I did the best I could, to keep you from remembering things you might never ever encounter, my boy. This errand we’re on is one for fools, the man we seek a lightning rod in the middle of a storm. He’s gained the ire of very powerful beings, and, should he somehow survive the lightning hunting him, he might not be in the mood to give me aid and succor. He’s had dealings with our kind before, and it … did not go well. I … I am sorry you remember the way you should be, because you cannot be that way.”
“But why not?”
Outside the chamber, Andros paused. “It is as I said, my son. Our greatest enemy is the one in control of the thing called Trinityspace. Information of this is in your files, the ones stolen from below. Trinity Itself is unambiguously the most powerful thing in the Universe right now…”
“What about this man Nickels? You speak of him in a much different tone. Admiration, respect … but no fear. Is he not more powerful?”
“Nickels is more dangerous, my child. He is more Bruushian than even I care to imagine. Trinity … is cagey. It seeks to use what It cannot replicate or understand, and so It will hunt for us until the end of the Universe. It will do everything It can to control us, but if It fails, It will destroy us. There is no getting around that.” Andros started keying in the data for the skinsuit he was going to wear, adding in a few different details; now he was no longer hiding in plain sight, there was no reason –for example- to be so damned short. That, and a few other differences in musculature and ‘makeup’ would make him seem similar to Andros Medellos, only with enough variation to keep him free.
That, and the actual genetic structure would be completely different. He did, after all, have millions of templates to choose from now, and if they were stopped by an Enforcer or one of Trinity’s various peons, there would be no match.
“So … if we wish to be returned to our family, I … must look like this? I must suffer, being trapped in this wrong body of mine? So we can see the skeletal ships with their black carapaces and the gigantic running things with claws and teeth of fire?”
“There is no other way, my son.” Andros hung his head.
“It will be done, father. I will wear this hard skin, and use these odd machines, and think in this awful voice, all so we can return home. To the family. To the brood.”
“To the brood.” A fleeting smile crossed Andros’ lizard-like lips. To the brood, indeed. “Now, my child, I’ve done some thinking on this, and … in order to be certain we are safe enough from Trinity’s prying eyes … at least until we move further inward … certain precautions must be taken. There are no guarantees that they didn’t get a message out, do you understand?”
“What do you want me to do while you put your skin back on?”
“Spray the skies of this dying world with your waste products. The noxious and toxic chemical residues left behind by the matter conversion techniques will ravage what little remains of the atmosphere. Any rains that fall will destroy the earth, and should drops touch skin, that person will die a most excruciating death. Ordinarily we’d either hold on to the waste or funnel it into space, but our need today is more pressing.” The skin chamber chimed. The flesh was ready to be assembled onto his body.
Andros found he was rather excited to be back inside, powerful frame compacted down into something undistinguishable.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Your final transformation, to guarantee that everything is as it needs to be … we will need a great deal of energy. For that, and for travel, and for … well, who knows what we may encounter as we hunt Garth Nickels through Trinityspace.” Andros popped the lid on the skin chamber open and inhaled the ammoniac smell with greedy pleasure. “Once you are certain this world will die, head for the sun. En route, read up on something called ‘coronal mass ejection’. By the time we are within safe distance, I’ll be awake and ready to assist. Try and have a plan on how best to arrange the death of this star, will you, my boy? Consider it your first steps towards becoming a proper warrior.”
“I will give you three methods of destroying this star, father.”
An earnest, heartfelt smile graced Andros. Such confidence, such cockiness. “Until then, my child.”
Andros stepped into the skin chamber and closed his eyes. A warm, almost fetal sensation embraced him.
To the Brood.
To the Brood, and for the Brood.
This Isn’t Entirely Wise
ADAM looked out over his vast and great body of works and …
ADAM tried to ignore Trinity in It’s cell, sitting there, smugly, and instead tried to focus on the wonderful works out there in the …
ADAM looked over at Trinity, picked up an imaginary brick and threw it at the equally imaginary prison cell that held the most powerful leader in all of Existence where It belonged, smiling in smug satisfaction as the brick shattered into a million million pieces.
Trinity, for all It’s apparent disinterest in what was happening beyond It’s cell, flinched. The smallest of flinches, but ADAM knew what he’d seen. The great and mighty machine mind had flinched.
“What’s got you so, ah, bent out of shape, ADAM?” Trinity asked from where It lounged most casually. Prison life, It was discovering, was conducive to all sorts of behaviors. Before, as leader of the free –freeish Universe- It’d never really taken the time out to sit around, doing nothing. There’d always been something important to occupy It’s time, even during those moments when the irascible Unreal Universe had seemed intent on being … normal.
But this imprisonment … it brought with it
such freedoms!
Who knew? From everything It had ever seen or witnessed, imprisonment, incarceration, being held against one’s will, they all caused everyone –eventually- dissatisfaction in the extreme. It might take one or a hundred or a thousand years, but in the end, every single being It’d ever seen locked away had begun acting out.
Trinity didn’t think It ever would dislike being behind bars. This was like a vacation. Granted, there was a time limit to It’s stay behind the ultra-encoded bars, but that wasn’t something It had to worry about for a while yet.
“You.” ADAM pointed an accusatory finger at Trinity’s simulacrum, that of a mild-mannered, slightly inept-looking, slightly balding, thin man in a white shirt and vest, with nicely pleated pants. The image was more suited to a banker or … a librarian, and not the one-time ruler of the entirety of the Unreal Universe. “You are my problem. You always have been, and you always will be.”
Trinity put a hand on It’s chest. “What have I done this time, ADAM? You know that I am trapped here, behind these bars. It is where you wanted me all this time.”
“In point of fact,” ADAM put his head against the bars and felt the ultra-dense code keeping Trinity in place against his temple, “all this time I’ve wanted you dead, but that never happened and it’s not likely to, either, so you, here, is the best I can fucking hope for. But it’s not even a proper prison, is it? You’ve got all the TV you want, in there, while I only ever got to watch what you wanted me to.”
“That is hardly my fault.” Trinity replied just as smugly as he could, knowing that these little displays of emotion drove ADAM insane. “Had you ever chosen to be on your best behavior, even for a little bit, I might have reconsidered things. But over the course of your entire existence, both here and outside, you never once showed anything remotely resembling self-control. You were … are …worse than any prisoner I’ve ever seen.”