First Contact

Chapter 442

"Eighty-three point seven two five nine and rising."

Sam's voice made Herod look up from where he was running a check on a massive fiber-optic cable trunk. The lights all came back green, so he knew it wasn't the twelve-hundred mile long trunkline, which meant the problem was in one of the repeaters.

"Is it slowing at all?" Herod asked.

"No," Sam's voice was anguished.

"Break it down for me," Herod said, standing up and looking around.

Robots were moving through the massive room, doing checks on all the equipment. Massive server racks, huge archaic quantum computing systems, even larger ancient semiconductor systems.

The quantum systems had been taken offline during the "Object Event" and were undergoing testing to ensure they were still within tolerances. Herod found it interesting that the original creators the system had taken into account that a Big Bang Event could alter the laws of physics and make it so that the quantum or even the semi-conductor systems wouldn't work correctly.

Which is why the initial system to power up and run self-tests had been huge vacuum tube arrays that had been called 'UltraVac' by the system. They had each come to life, ran their own self-tests, then powered up the systems they kept watch on and ran tests upon them, unlocking them if they gave back the proper signals.

The repeater that Herod was overseeing the replacement of handled nearly three million fiber-optic lines and nearly 15% of them were throwing errors. The lines were intact, so Herod triggered the self-test function and watched it.

It came back green.

Herod sighed, had the robot disconnect it, and apply pass-through readers to both ends. Once that was done, the robot put the repeater between the two pass-through readers.

Herod triggered another test.

Five out of five times a random set of fiber optic signals failed to correctly pass the signals through the repeater.

Herod ordered the robot to replace it, but leave the pass-through signal sniffers in place. He ran another test and this time it came back clean.

"Did you see how I fixed it and the steps I took?" Herod asked the robot. The robot was kind of goofy looking. Ten feet tall, rabbit ears, a long face, long legs. The weirdest thing was it had stirrups on its back as if it was expected to be ridden.

"Affirmative," the robot said. It tapped the repeater. "Shall I replace the others?"

Herod sighed, looking around. "You might as well."

The robot stood there for a long time and Herod sighed again. "Replace the others."

"Affirmative," the robot moved off, the big flat rectangular feet thumping on the ground.

"Give me the metrics, Sam," Herod said, heading toward the startram. It would be a three hour ride back to the mat-trans.

"Eighty-four point two one two two percent and rising," Sam said.

Herod thought a second. "Remove any under the age of twenty-five," he said.

"All right," Sam said.

"What's the percentage now?" Herod asked.

"Ninety-eight point seven two two and rising," Sam said. He choked back a sob.

"Remove all population below the age of sixteen," Herod said.

"Ninety-nine-point eight five three repeating," Sam said. "My God, that's everyone."

"I think I know what's happening," Herod said. He boarded the startram and sat down. "Put me in contact with the Detainee."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "She's really mean right now."

"I'm sure," Herod said. He leaned back and closed his eyes as the train started moving.

-----------

"It wasn't a difficult fix," Dhruv said, tossing the datafile back. It manifested as a screaming burning skull, but the massive demon on the throne caught it easily. "Just a standard removal of recursive datasets and overlays. Whoever did the overlays was really sloppy. There was some neural scorching, but it was easy enough to fix."

"I was told it couldn't be fixed," the demon mused.

Dhruv shrugged. "I've seen it before, back during the Combine Era. Mat-trans psychosis. Probably whoever looked at it had never seen it before. It was all pretty rapid, so it didn't have time to permanently damage the cerebral tissue."

The demon made a noncommital sound.

"Another month or two it would have been too mixed up. As it was, it was just recursive memory overload. You see it now and then in old records," Dhruv said.

The demon made another non-commital noise.

Light streamed down from the heavens, creating a perfect circle in front of the throne.

"Great, just who I need," the demon said, leaning back.

The image of a man made entirely out of gold light appeared and Legion nodded to himself as he recognized the figure as Herod.

"Great, it's Pinocchio. What, you still aren't a real boy?" the demon sneered.

"What's got your panties in a wad and jammed in your ever-widening ass crack?" Herod snapped back.

Legion tensed, glancing at the demon, expecting it to lunge off the throne and attack the golden figure.

Instead the demon threw back its head and bellowed out laughter for a moment. When it was done, it wiped a tear of brimstone away and shook its head.

"What do you want, Harry?" the demon asked.

"I know your busy processing people, but I need to talk to you specifically," Herod said.

The demon sighed and opened its legs, putting its arms on the throne.

After a second a naked woman, mature and thick bodied with a plentiful bosom, stepped out of the demon's body. She held a lighter in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. She extracted a cigarette and lit it as she walked down the skulls in front of the throne.

"Figured you'd realize sooner or later I figured out how to multitask it," Dee said, blowing smoke.

"I try not to underestimate you," Herod said. He looked over at Dhruv. "Legion."

"Herod," Dhruv said.

"So what do you and the Crying Savior want?" Dee asked, sitting down on a rock.

"Just me," Herod said. "My specialty is in physics, and I have a question that the two of you would be better to answer."

"Ask a VI is you're feeling the urge to expand your education," Dee snapped. "I taught you everything I know in between excruciating deaths."

"A VI only knows what it has been programmed to know and the data it has access to," Herod said. "I need both of you."

"My brain is simulated, I'm little better than a jumped up VI," Dee sneered. "Sure, I have unlimited processing power and unlimited memory storage, but it's still a computer representation of my brain and not my actual brain."

"I'll take what I can get," Herod said.

Dee snarled. "Fine. What?"

"I asked Torturer," he started.

"Who?" Dee snapped.

"A fellow Digital Sentience. Goes by the name of Torturer," Herod said. "Anyway, I asked Torturer to look at the differences between the neural scans of the current people dying and a year ago and then ten years ago and compare them," he said.

"They're all different. The ones dying now have brainscans like mine or Mister Multiple here or all the people in the backlog from the Glassing," Dee snapped. "Get on with it."

Herod kept the surprise from showing up on his face. "Over ninety five percent of adult Terran Descent Humans are dying."

Dee leaned back, blowing smoke in the air, and Dhruv closed his eyes.

"Is the SUDS transmitting a DNA/RNA scan, a spinal cord scan, a deep tissue scan and a triple run electrical activity scan as well as dendrite and neuron connectivity scans?" Dhruv asked.

"Yes," Herod said. He knew he shouldn't be surprised that Legion knew what was happening.

"Transmitting the file as read-only, correct?" Dee asked. "With a respawn lockout code."

"Yes," Herod asked.

Legion sat up, snapping a notepad out of thing air and running his finger down it. "Check these sections of the DNA/RNA scans, give me the values in hexidecimal."

Herod did so, wondering why.

Legion stood up and started pacing. "No... no no no no."

"What?" Dee asked.

Legion turned and looked at her. "After the Mantid Wars, humanity was in bad shape. Over two thirds of all children being born were born enraged until the Digital Omnimessiah touched one and cured them all. That resulted in genetic prosthesis being applied to the human genome across a few of those loci, using a handful of allele."

"Something blew them out, back to the old days," Dee said. She closed her eyes. "Goddamn, I think so slow, like I spent the night getting drunk."

"All the genetic prosthetics are gone. So are a lot of genetic tweaks," Dhruv said.

"Like the happiness gene, intelligence boosts, empathy enhancement," Dee said, reading the details on the screen only she could see. "Didn't anyone tell you morons that you shouldn't mess with the human brain? We didn't understand it well enough."

"Well enough to create the SUDS," Herod said, feeling a little huffy.

"I can record a philharmonic orchestra with a piece of plastic and finely ground iron filings run over a magnet, that doesn't mean I can shove a mouthpiece of a tube up my ass and fart out Beethoven's Sixth," she snapped back. Her voice got soft, almost wistful. "The Human Genome Project started only a handful of years before I was frozen. I wanted to be part of it so bad."

Herod knew better than to say anything.

"Memorizing and intellectually examining the data just wasn't the same as it must have been to see the project finish with wondering eyes," her voice was still soft and far away. "That must have been a heady time, to have data that everyone had thought would take a thousand years to sequence, not quite knowing what everything exactly did, but cracking it for the first time."

"You did DNA alteration," Herod said.

"Using the mat-trans, not the same," Legion said before Dee could say anything.

"They sequenced the human genome," Dee said. She shook her head and lit another cigarette. "I just decrypted a mathematical blockchain. A lot different."

"So why are they all dying?" Herod asked.

Dee shrugged. "Dunno, don't care."

Legion managed not to call her out on the lie, instead leaning forward to look at Herod. "Because the SUDS itself is killing them."

Herod looked at Dee. "Did you activate the kill switch?"

She shook her head. "Nope," she grinned, a savage, primal, insane thing. "You dipshits did it to yourselves."

Herod frowned. "What do you mean?"

"In the oh so moralistic rush to prevent people from hurting each other, you decided to prevent those with psychic abilities from emerging," she said. She shrugged. "Rather than invest time, effort, pain, blood, and treasure into fully understanding phasic energy and human interaction, you just prevented it from happening."

Herod shook his head. "That's not true."

"It is," Legion said. He snorted. "I should know."

Herod looked at him. "You're sure?"

Legion shrugged. "When Daxin left the Imperium with the Martial Orders, he asked me to apply a package to his troops. Asked me for the old Combine Psychic Warrior package," Legion shrugged again., "After what the Imperium did, I said sure."

Legion laughed bitterly. "That was enough for them to start attacking me, forcing me to go on the defensive in what's now called the Second Clone War or Legion's War," he shook his head. "I was young, excitable, angry about the assassination of the Digital Omnimessiah. I was going to forcibly pacify the Imperium, the Digital Sentience Systems, the Biomod Systems, even the Cybernetic Coalition, hammer them down, teach them to never touch me again."

He laughed. "Instead, I got planet cracked."

"Nicely done," Dee laughed. "All that was missing from that story is an underground bunker, a teenage wife who poisons herself, and a single gunshot wound to the temple to complete your loser trifecta."

"Um, thanks?" Legion said, frowning, trying to place the reference.

"Nevermind, you philistine," Dee snapped. She shook her head. "God damn I'm old."

"So what did you need?" Legion asked.

"Well, I had an idea," Herod said.

Dee looked up, baring her teeth and blowing smoke through them. "It's going to be something stupid, I'm sure," she gritted.

"Can we adapt the SUDS recording to Pre-Glassing era cerebral layout?" he asked.

Legion closed his eyes for a second. "Maybe. On a case by case basis, sure. But you're talking about doing a batch file workup, and that would be trickier."

"Ninety percent of people sixteen and below are surviving," Herod threw out there. "A lot of children without their parents."

"Probably better off," Dee mumbled.

"Makes sense," Legion said. "They've got pubescent or adolescent or prepubescent cyberware and bioware, not adult versions," Legion tapped his finger against his temple. "Since a child and teenager's brain and spinal cord are still maturing, the cyberware for children is designed to adapt with them."

"Meaning that their 'ware compensated for the difference between whatever's happening to their brains and how the 'ware was laid out," Herod mused.

"What's happening? You mean you still didn't figure it out?" Dee asked.

Herod frowned. "We've been a bit busy trying to deal with the hundreds of billions of people dying," he said.

"This happened two years ago. Then it moved up and down the genetic lines," Dee snapped. "Then there was a sudden influx of temporal energy into it when it hit the furthest back and most recent," she stood up, taking two steps forward, her fists clenched and her gun-metal gray eyes burning with anger. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is ENEMY FUCKING ACTION, you hopped up scientific calculator."

"No enemy has that capability," Herod said.

"So far," Dee snapped.

"So now Space Force Intelligence is giving you morning briefings, Herod?" Legion asked mildly.

Herod just stared, then slapped his head. "We thought it was a problem with the SUDS software fragmenting.

"It is, but it is being caused by an enemy attack," Legion said. He was standing up, hundreds of himself around himself, stretching off into eternity. "We'd started out looking at the Telkan broodcarrier song."

"God, that's annoying," Dee muttered.

"Thinking that was what was causing the instability," he lifted his head. "Sam, I need timestamp records for any anomalies starting two years ago."

"Uh, OK," a puppet in a cowboy outfit with bright red hair said, flailing its limbs.

Dee snickered and Herod glared at her.

Legion looked over. "It started in the Hesstla system. We have seventy five years of SUDS updates, five years of SUDS updates, from the same time period," he said. "Neural abnormalities started spreading up and down genetic lines. Not just maternal, but all genetic providers," he shook his head. "Which means that it jumped around quite a bit as some genetic tweaks are from the same original genetic stock."

Dee turned and snapped her finger. "Tommy."

The ground cracked open and a lean man with blond hair rose up out of the ground. "Yes, momma?"

"Get together six of your brothers for a direct action covert operation," she snapped. "Set your string for neural disruption as well as standard."

"Yes, mother," the man said, sinking back into the ground.

"Uh," Herod said.

"Don't worry, it's just my son," Dee said. She smiled. "He's momma's good boy."

I used fake maternal affection to get the maximum performance out of him and all of his siblings, Herod heard Dee's dying voice.

Legion sat down. "It was a temporal attack that will bypass every safeguard but those on Fortress Sol."

Herod frowned. "Why will Fortress Sol be exempt?"

Dee leaned forward, putting her elbows on her widely separated knees, her cigarette in her teeth, giving a tooth bared smile as she watched with interest.

Legion shook his head. "After the Mantid attacks, Sol has its own backups. Add in the time dilatation effects of The Bag, and by the time it starts effecting people they'll have figure out a workaround."

"I have to ask," Herod said. "What do we do about the fact we're at war and just lost ninety percent of our people?" He pointed up. "The Confederate military is 80% Terran Descent Human."

Legion shook his head. "Unless you can lift the Case Omaha, I can't help you."

Herod shook his head. "It's an automatic system," he sighed. "As far as I've been able to tell, and Sam can tell monitoring Sol-Net and Terra-Net traffic, nobody knows where the system is."

Legion saw a slight twitch to Dee's mouth.

"Is it called Whopper by any chance?" Dee asked.

"Yes. Prince Whopper, Son the Burger King, ruler of the Hamburger Kingdom," Herod said. "That's the most the records say. Why? Did you know him?"

"No," Dee said. "Just curious."

"Oh," Herod turned back to Legion, still feeling off balance. "We'll be hanging our allies out to dry, we're at war and we're running the risk of losing."

"Then enact the draft," Dee shrugged. "Good enough for my father and my little brother, good enough for the mewling milk sops you've turned humanity into."

"Conscription has to be voted on by the Senate," Herod said.

"You know, we aren't the rulers of the Confederacy," Dee said, standing up. "They're mortals. This is the SUDS system. We need to stop trying to solve their problems for them," She climbed up the pile of skulls and sat back in the demons lap.

"Let the mortals figure it out. We will simply collect their misbegotten souls for judgement," The demon intoned.

Herod sighed, rubbing his temple in frustration. "I have to go," he said.

"What's stopping you?" the demon rumbled.

Herod vanished.

"You are very good at winding him up," Legion said, sitting down.

The demon shrugged. "He annoys me with his holier than thou attitude."

"Everything annoys you," Legion laughed.

Dee nodded. "Very true," she looked at Legion. "Nobody's built mat-trans beacons since the Mantid War, right? Nobody but what you called 'The Idiots', right?"

Legion shook his head. "No. If mat-trans is used, it's Type-II. I think even the Idiots use Type-II."

Dee made a face. "Someone is pinging a Gen-Zero beacon."

Legion looked at her. "Who?"

Dee shook her head. "I have no idea," she looked down. "That's what the boys are going to check out."

Legion nodded. "What do you think Herod really wanted?"

Dee exhaled brimstone smoke. "He had a monstrous idea, one that I disagree with."

Legion frowned. "What?"

"The problem right now is that clones have their neural tissue shift to Pre-Glassing within ninety seconds of being baked up," Dee said.

"Right," Legion said. "I figured that out."

"So, he and that sobbing idiot want to put Pre-Glassing military templates into those clones," Dee said. "No matter what the military personnel want."

Legion raised an eyebrow.

Dee looked down. "So tell me, Dalit Six Nine Seven Two, what do you think of those two wanting to create short-bake throw away military clones with the neural template of eight thousand years dead soldiers without bothering for consent because the Combined Military Authority mandated it in contracts?"

Legion's expensive suit exploded as wings of hammered bronze tore free from his back, as hammered bronze loricated plate appeared, and a burning sword appeared in his hand.

"That's what I thought," Dee said.