First Contact

Chapter 536: Resurgence - Legends Pt 2

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

OK, what do you guys think?

--If you or someone you know is a human in crisis, support lines are available 36-9. Terrans have always stood beside us when we needed them, we're here to help now. Please call, text, or arrive in person at one of the following locations or numbers.

Remember, we've faced this malevolent universe together, let's stick together where it matters.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Looks good. Better than the Pubvians.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

What? What's wrong with ours?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

It seems a little... forceful.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

Oh, I gotta see this.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Show the kids, Pubvia.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Today sucks! But tomorrow might not. The only way you'll know is if you're around to see it! Are you going to give in to a malevolent universe? It's laughing at you! You! Personally! Are you going to just sit there and let it laugh at you? Let it dominate you? Fight back! Scream, cry, but do not go gently into that dark night! Call or text to our crisis management teams! All calls are anonymous.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

I do not see a problem with that. Terrans are an aggressive people. Speaking to their aggression may work.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

No offense, sis, but yours made me sad.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

What's wrong with it?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

The whole pictures of empty human cities with sappy music and the whole "please call us, we're ready to listen" text on it made me sad. I felt like any second you were going to have a blurb for funeral homes or anti-depressant medication.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

It wasn't that bad.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

It made my ducklings sad.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Fine. We'll redo it.

Everyone's a critic. We just wanted to let the Terrans know we understood where their pain comes from.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We know, sis. You care very much. We all get that.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

We have five Terrans on our worlds. What should we tell them to do?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Try not to break shit.

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ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS

I know that.

I mean, what should we do. We're alive and free because of them.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Live. Let them see life still continues.

Our parents are a passionate people. While they are sometimes given to melancholy, eventually they come out the other side.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Usually chasing someone with a spear and yelling at them to stop running, they'll only die tired.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Well, you're not wrong there.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's just so frustrating.

And the seers aren't helping.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

What do you mean?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Dude, you don't just come right out and ask about the seers, man.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Why not?

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Because, they might hear you and then they'll look at you.

You don't want that.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

That seems very strange.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Seers are strange.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Still, I wish to know.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

We know humans, Earthlings, and Terrans are still out there, so the fact that they keep singing, drawing, painting, and rhyming about them isn't that big of a shock.

We keep asking what we can do to ensure the Terrans returns.

The seers say there is nothing we can do, that Terran Descent Humanity as we know it is extinct.

Then they tell us that the wrath of the Children of Zamin , the Warriors of the Garden of Life, the Sons and Daughters of Lok, will crash down upon those who devoured their previous banquet and seek to take away the banquet set before us.

It's a little more complicated, but that's the basic gist.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

ooooh, I don't like that.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

What? It seems to say that humans will return.

That's a good thing, right?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Uh, not really.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Oof, those are some old names.

Jeez, could you imagine some OG humans busting out on the universe?

Those guys were bad news.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

I do CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA not understand. Humans have been good to us.

Sorry. It just keeps repeating every time the Atrekna bring in more reinforcements.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Kid, they beat Treana'ad (although it can be argued that Treana'ad over there won the war), they beat us, the beat Mantid, and that's just who survived.

You've met Terran Descent Humanity. Notice the phrase. Notice the way that Mantid's seers phrased it.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

OH! I understand now.

TDH will not be coming back. Rather, they shall shed their TDH skin and emerge as a new creature, their skin shining with their newness, their eyes flashing with their wrath, and their form terrible to behold and filled with purpose.

They will come marching out of the mists of time, from where they had been left behind purposefully so that their children did not dwell within their bloody shadow. They had been content to stay in the foggy depths of history, but now, when all is in danger, they shall stalk forward with burning eyes and flashing swords to interpose themselves between those who cannot or will not protect themselves and those who seek to turn our universe into a larder for obscene appetites.

Ware, my fellow beings, ware and doom! Can you not hear the thunder of the black iron doors of forgotten history crashing open to reveal that which was laid to rest returning to wrathful life? Can you not see the birds and beasts flee before them? Can you not feel the trembling of the universe beneath their marching boots? Do you not taste the storm clouds racing before them to warn all that a rain of blood shall shower down to cleanse the universe of a taint most foul?

The Earthlings come! The children, the Mad Lemurs of Terra have swept aside the curtain to reveal their wrathful parents, Enraged Hammer of the Universe! They come! They come!

Huddle close to the fire, for the Earthlings stalk the night to teach those who lurk within it the meaning of fear! Sing your songs with strength, chant your tales with courage, speak your legends boldly, for the Enraged Lemurs of Earth approach with their voices lifted in song and their fists raised in wrath!

Hold tight to the iron ring set into the bow of the sailing vessel as the tempest howls about you and the universe itself plunges into the maelstrom!

They come!

They come!

For our eyes have gazed upon the eternity of a purple sky

and in our meditations we have learned even death may die

with fiery sword and wrath unbound

we have seen the man come around

the universe will laugh with glee

as even devils and angels flee

Ware and woe to all who devour

this is thine final hour

for the lemurs come with howling rage

to bring about the end of an age.

They come!

They come!

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...

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.....

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What.

The.

Fuck?

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Did he just have a stroke?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Uh, Lank, are you all right?

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Yes. Why do you ask?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Oh, no reason. Just idle curiosity.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

That was really CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA really strange.

Everyone else heard that, right?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Um, yeah. We all heard that.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Uh, Lank, you were saying?

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

I was simply stating that the nouns and pronouns of Mantid's seer's statements are the important part. Terran Descent Humanity is extinct as we know them, but Terrans, or possibly Earthlings, are not and will be returning.

Was it that hard to understand?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

No, not hard to understand at all.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Uh, guys, did anyone else just see the BobCo advertising that just got blasted across just about every SolNet, GalNet, and InfoNet?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh, Gods above, what is that maniac doing now?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Here's the quote:

"if you are or know a Terran in distress, call our hotline and take the twenty-two question quiz and receive either a kitten or puppy for them today! Let the Terrans know their friends have returned and are eager to meet them! Thanks to the efforts of Legion and the Confederate Intelligence Services, the Friend Plague is at last cured! Get your puppy or kitten today!"

"BOBCO! Happiness in a box is only a com-call away!"

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

And then the 'Nets exploded.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Wait, Legion did it. The Legion.

As in "The Leader of the Clone Systems during the Third Artificial War" Legion?

That Legion?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Legion. AKA: Vat Grown Luke.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Wait, what?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Legion is Vat Grown Luke.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

How do you know that?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh, you know...

Legion and the Fleet of One. That was the most horrible part of it all. Seeing Vat Grown Luke in Imperium armor, with Imperium battle wagons, telling us: "My name... is Legion."

It was horrifying to us.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Wait, the Imperium Immortals are the Biological Apostles?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

We're pretty sure.

Not to be confused with "The Immortals" that the Combine fielded and wasted on Anthill.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

I'm confused.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's 8,000 year old history, dear.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

That is not that long ago. There are grav-cars still in use by government personnel that are older than that.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Yeah, well, you kind of had ships that were so old the fissionables had decayed to solid rock, the superconductor wiring had literally rotted away, the molycircs had degraded into lumps of carbon ash, and the entire hull was one vacuum welded solid.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Well, yes. It was a miscalculation on our part.

But if one had been in a decaying orbit that destroyed a civilization upon impact with the planetary crust, it does not matter that the ship had been in orbit for ten million years.

What matters is the impact and the results of said impact.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

He's got a point, sis.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

How is it that even though they're virtually extinct, with less than a million living members left, Terran Descent Humanity is still causing this much havoc on the galactic arm?

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ALL>BEHOLD! HUMANITY!

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The fox and the frog dropped from the rope made of interlaced PNG files long forgotten, their glittering feet splashing in the puddles of ancient mIRC conversations of people long dead. The looked around at the top of the massive dam even as the frog gave the rope a shake. The rope released at the top of the cliff, falling down into a perfect coil. The frog picked it up and handed it to the fox, who pulled the loop over his head and let it fall on one shoulder, so it crossed his chest to rest against one hip.

The frog moved to the edge of the dam, gripping the moss covered railing with one hand, holding tight to his spear with the other.

"How far down do you think we are?" the frog asked the fox as the fox shuffled up next to him, limping slightly from a bandaged wound.

The fox looked up at the gleaming vista where a nebula of network traffic slowly streamed by in an obsidian sky.

"Really far, Leebaw," the fox said.

"There's faces engraved in the front of the dam, Telkan," Leebaw said, looking down. "The souls in the water are pouring out the mouths on about three of them."

Telkan leaned forward slightly, holding onto the railing, and looked down. There were dozens of faces, all highly stylized. Some fierce, some sad, some male, some female. In three cases the wide open mouth fountained water, and souls, into a different canal each. The pair could see over a dozen dry canals.

"It's a sorting array, I think," Telkan said, leaning back. He shook his head. "The imagery here is enough to drive someone mad."

"For a species that had only mastered fire fifty or so thousand years ago, they build big when they build," Leebaw chuckled. He looked around. "There should be an old maintenance path somewhere."

Telkan turned to look at the vast lake behind them. The water was lapping at the edge of the damn, and as they watched a small trickle of water, containing a few sleeping Terrans curled into the fetal position, washed across the top of the dam to trickle down the side.

Leebaw shook his head. "That's a serious backlog."

Telkan nodded, bending down to look at one of the souls. It was transparent, almost invisible, suspended in thick code that appeared as dark and cold water. "Strange clothing. Female. Long hair. No obvious cyberware or datalink."

Leebaw knelt down and looked at the woman as she slowly slid across the dam top, coming to rest in a large pool of cold dark water. She was curled up, asleep.

"Who do you think she is?" Leebaw asked.

Telkan shook his head. "I don't know, but she's been down here a long time," he said, pointing at the strands of code that moved like water weeds that were twined in her hair and around her limbs. "Those are checksum values. A lot of them."

Leebaw stood up, looking at the far side of the dam. He shaded his eyes, as if it would stop the dim glow, and squinted. "We should get moving. We don't want those gargoyles seeing us again."

Telkan nodded. He glanced again at the massive lake. "I wonder how long they've been backlogged."

The pair moved forward as Leebaw answered. "Who knows. We'll just keep following this path. It has to lead somewhere."

"We'll try climbing down and following one of the canals if there's no door or cave entrance on the far side," Telkan said. He glanced up, keeping an eye out for wyverns, gargoyles, drakes, or peryton.

"Sounds good," Leebaw said. He hefted a chunk of dark code, part of the head of a massive golem of great and terrible power the duo had defeated earlier. "He should get us past any door or guardian."

Together, the fox and the frog kept moving deeper into the system.

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COLD STORAGE STATUS: BUFFER OVERRUN.

FORWARDING 6.0E^1 TEMPLATES

WARNING! COLD STORAGE OUT OF MEMORY!

ACCESS GRANTED: MAINTENANCE SUPERVISOR ICE

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Sam-UL knelt down, examining the gleaming globe of chrome in his hands.

He could not find any malware within it, but it made him afraid.

He was barely able to hang on to his sanity, to his life, the last influx of SUDS templates that had flooded the system had almost shredded him apart.

Could he do it again?

Could he remember who he was?

Could he survive another tsunami of souls?

Herod had been right. Fixing all the hardware in the system had no meaning if the software wasn't working.

It was a complex patch. Sam-UL didn't understand the majority of what it did.

He saw an alert pop up. An ICE was moving around in the SUDS channels. One of the heavy duty roving high security ones.

That wasn't unusual.

Without really thinking about it, Sam-UL authorized its continued progression.

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Leebaw whistled low as Telkan lifted the crystal. Strange, vast machines, some of bronze and copper, other of bone and sinew lashed together, filled the inside of the dam. Code strings dripped from the ceiling, pooling in half-formed images with strange hue and balance.

The thumping of a damaged piston, the grinding of stuck gears, filled the air and made it shudder like it was made of crystal. Several puddles had Terrans curled up in the fetal position deep within their dark shallow depths.

"Looks like that gear jumped the track," Leebaw said as they moved past a black bronze gear taller than both of them and as thick as a blog post.

"Think we could put it back in?" Telkan asked, stopping and looking at it. The gear rocked back and forth slightly, one pintle outside of the divot that normally held it.

"Should we is the better question," Leebaw said. He looked around. "I don't want to damage any of these," he said, pointing at a curled up Terran sleeping in the far depths of a dark and shallow puddle of code. "They're still people."

"Looks like it opens the sluices," Telkan mused. He reached forward and put one hand on it as it rocked forward slightly, repeating an action they had seen it do a dozen times.

The gear moved just a hair's breadth further this time, and rocked into the socket where it was supposed to be.

With a loud shuddering groan it began to turn.

Great chains of complex commands clanked and thundered as they were pulled into position and tension was put on them.

"Fool of a Telkan," Leebaw snapped. "Run!"

Together, they ran for the far end of the interior of the dam, jumping over the limitless depths of shallow dark puddles, dodging dripping process calls, and swerving around out range variables that fell from the ceiling.

They reached the far door as the dam shuddered and shook. Leebaw held up the damaged black ICE head of the defeated security golem as the eyes of the black chrome skull set in the wall flashed.

The door ground open and the two lunged through, into the dark maintenance passage.

The door slid shut as they heard the thundering sound of water pouring through long dry sluices, ejected in long plumes from the mouths of graven images and into canals long dry.

"Let's not do that again," Leebaw said, gasping.

"Agreed," Telkan said. He raised up the small crystal. "Let's keep going."

Together, the followed the musical notes floating in midair that softly illuminated the tunnel.

soft blanket warm blanket cuddle blanket good podling sleepy podling happy podling dreams are sweet and dreams are neat its time for bedtime and a treat