Gordian Slash
2009-02-27 11:25:13 UTC
I grasped at that image and held it in my mind. It seemed somehow
more...coherent...than the others, as if it, at least, had taken place
within the same dimensional landscape as the one in which I habitually
dwelled. This empathetic embracing of the image seemed to trigger a
montage of related imagery, almost as if one had somehow scrolled
through a linked sub-set of correlated data on a computer screen.
The pyramid fell through space, the mere distances between stars no
hindrance to its supraluminal passage. It reached its destination and
dropped through a clear oxygen rich atmosphere in a blaze of meteoric
fire. It landed on a large island land mass in a vast oceanic gulf
between two continental reaches - masses continuing to exhibit
noticeable tectonic movement away from each other. Portals opened in the
sides of the pyramid and beings emerged, avoiding contact with the still
cooling hardened ceramic material of the structures outer plating.
Tall and skeletally lithe winged humanoids bound forth to examine their
new home. The world was good, rich in plants and animals and possessed
of a biosphere that would not inhibit the mycotial forms and food-beasts
that they preferred. There was little here that could threaten
them...beings who had fought - and occasionally defeated - the physical
extrusions into this dimension of entities so alien as to be utterly
devoid of commonality of form or function, would not be deterred by a
few carnivorous lizards. No matter how big.
With the aid of advanced biotechnological mechanisms the pyramid
dwellers raised a complex and advanced society in short order; a culture
spanning the huge central island on which they had originally made
landfall, and then rapidly spread to outposts on the nearby continents.
Of all their creations - the space devouring ships, the half alive
energy weapons known as scalds, the mirrored membranes that allowed
them to see great distances and the energy accumulation crystals - the
most useful proved to be the tool beast. This creature was a large
dense amorphous cellular mass of singular properties. It was exceedingly
strong, flexible and, when left to its own devices, fearlessly
aggressive. It had also been designed to be very hard to kill. Their
masters kept them in line with mental controls reinforced by blasts from
their energy scalds...that and what was believed to be fail-safe inbred
conditioning prohibiting rebellion. With the aid of the tool beasts the
winged men built an number of installations across their new world, and
held them against any intrusive native fauna.
Deep in their oddly squat towers of native rock and the tunnels that ran
in ubiquitous mazes beneath, the winged men fell to those genetic
researches closest to their racial interests. These beings had long ago
meddled in their own racial origins, their biotechnology allowing
genetic twists and leaps of variation we can only dream of today. They
bred a mutated sub-species of their own stock that did not possess the
wings of their progenitors, for use as a sort of guardian-worker class.
These sports were followed by a centaur-like creature of great speed and
stamina, but even lower retained intellect. An aquatic variation proved
less tractable and had to be destroyed en-mass lest it escape and breed true.
Such were the pastimes of the Earths new masters.
Then an outpost of winged men and their servitors were wiped out by an
unknown force which left little evidence as to its nature...only the
small herd of ubiquitous tool beasts assigned to the site were left
alive. This happened again, and yet again - always on the fringes of
the nascent civilization. And, as always, nothing survived but the ever
loyal amorphs.
The winged men realized, too late, that it was the amorphs doing the
killing. Not until their major city fell in an uprising of the
tool-beasts, who had not only slipped their genetic programming but had,
somehow, developed a growing resistance to the power of their masters
primary weapon - the energy scald.
The dream of the three blobs, each more resistant to your winged
friends weapons than the last! The professor was moved to a rare interjection.
Lara simply gave the old man a respectful look and continued:
The war with the amorphs destroyed the culture of the winged-men. They
had to resort to an energy release that literally sank their island
civilization beneath the sea, in their resolve to try and destroy their
rebellious servitors. It was purely retributive, as most of the
surviving winged-men were destroyed in the vengeful blast as well. Huge
tsunamis rolled across the worlds oceans with the sinking of the great
island, devastating distant lands for dozens of miles inland...and
drowning most of the winged-mens remaining coastal installations.
Unfortunately, as a species, they had always liked a nice bit of waterfront.
In the end only a few winged-men remained, too few to overcome the
surviving amorphs. In desperation they used the apex of their biotech to
dissolve their genetic potential into a single gestalt organism...a
powerful and hardy organism. A form capable of surviving for a very long
time indeed...
...the form of the blood dancer I had found writhing above the bowl at
the top of the volcanic pedestal.
They had sealed up the vestiges of their genetic heritage in this single
vessel, and hidden it away in a distant underground citadel. Time passed
and the citadel became ruins, the ruins became wilderness, and
eventually nothing was left except forgotten underground chambers and a
single crooked path to the surface.
Well, not exactly nothing. The installation they had chosen for the
repository of their species potential was selected as it was originally
the strongest and most defensible of all their citadels - for good
reason. This particular set of tunnels also housed a device of such
power and utility that the winged-men dared not keep it anywhere near
their principle island city. Such was the scope of its importance, and
the vital necessity for it to function undisturbed across the ages.
The alien minds in bloodborn communion with me revealed how the
surviving amorphs finally found them, following the emanations from the
singular mechanism housed in the long caves beneath these same upper
chambers. The creatures did not operate with intent so much as by
instinct, the instinct to seek out and destroy their racial tormentors
now that they were free of their domination - this urge had become the
only true emotion they possessed, beyond the need to feed sufficiently
for replication to take place. It was unlikely that the blobs even
understood that they had cornered the very last representatives of their
detested ex-masters on this world - perhaps the last in the Universe -
in these benighted chambers; more likely they simply thought, if such an
elevated concept as true thought were even remotely appropriate for the
processes that drove these creatures, that the presence of the still
active device would eventually herald the return of their nemesis. So
they waited, lairing in a chamber above.
The alien zeitgeist had learned as much of myself and of future humanity
as I had learned of them and their sojourn on Earth, for the empathic
image-driven connection between us was two way in nature. I would have
tried to deny them this, but I had no skill at this invasive form of
information exchange.
Besides...I only realized how much they really knew when they made me
the offer.
---
ENDS PART TWENTY FOUR ( LC 6.2.24 )
more...coherent...than the others, as if it, at least, had taken place
within the same dimensional landscape as the one in which I habitually
dwelled. This empathetic embracing of the image seemed to trigger a
montage of related imagery, almost as if one had somehow scrolled
through a linked sub-set of correlated data on a computer screen.
The pyramid fell through space, the mere distances between stars no
hindrance to its supraluminal passage. It reached its destination and
dropped through a clear oxygen rich atmosphere in a blaze of meteoric
fire. It landed on a large island land mass in a vast oceanic gulf
between two continental reaches - masses continuing to exhibit
noticeable tectonic movement away from each other. Portals opened in the
sides of the pyramid and beings emerged, avoiding contact with the still
cooling hardened ceramic material of the structures outer plating.
Tall and skeletally lithe winged humanoids bound forth to examine their
new home. The world was good, rich in plants and animals and possessed
of a biosphere that would not inhibit the mycotial forms and food-beasts
that they preferred. There was little here that could threaten
them...beings who had fought - and occasionally defeated - the physical
extrusions into this dimension of entities so alien as to be utterly
devoid of commonality of form or function, would not be deterred by a
few carnivorous lizards. No matter how big.
With the aid of advanced biotechnological mechanisms the pyramid
dwellers raised a complex and advanced society in short order; a culture
spanning the huge central island on which they had originally made
landfall, and then rapidly spread to outposts on the nearby continents.
Of all their creations - the space devouring ships, the half alive
energy weapons known as scalds, the mirrored membranes that allowed
them to see great distances and the energy accumulation crystals - the
most useful proved to be the tool beast. This creature was a large
dense amorphous cellular mass of singular properties. It was exceedingly
strong, flexible and, when left to its own devices, fearlessly
aggressive. It had also been designed to be very hard to kill. Their
masters kept them in line with mental controls reinforced by blasts from
their energy scalds...that and what was believed to be fail-safe inbred
conditioning prohibiting rebellion. With the aid of the tool beasts the
winged men built an number of installations across their new world, and
held them against any intrusive native fauna.
Deep in their oddly squat towers of native rock and the tunnels that ran
in ubiquitous mazes beneath, the winged men fell to those genetic
researches closest to their racial interests. These beings had long ago
meddled in their own racial origins, their biotechnology allowing
genetic twists and leaps of variation we can only dream of today. They
bred a mutated sub-species of their own stock that did not possess the
wings of their progenitors, for use as a sort of guardian-worker class.
These sports were followed by a centaur-like creature of great speed and
stamina, but even lower retained intellect. An aquatic variation proved
less tractable and had to be destroyed en-mass lest it escape and breed true.
Such were the pastimes of the Earths new masters.
Then an outpost of winged men and their servitors were wiped out by an
unknown force which left little evidence as to its nature...only the
small herd of ubiquitous tool beasts assigned to the site were left
alive. This happened again, and yet again - always on the fringes of
the nascent civilization. And, as always, nothing survived but the ever
loyal amorphs.
The winged men realized, too late, that it was the amorphs doing the
killing. Not until their major city fell in an uprising of the
tool-beasts, who had not only slipped their genetic programming but had,
somehow, developed a growing resistance to the power of their masters
primary weapon - the energy scald.
The dream of the three blobs, each more resistant to your winged
friends weapons than the last! The professor was moved to a rare interjection.
Lara simply gave the old man a respectful look and continued:
The war with the amorphs destroyed the culture of the winged-men. They
had to resort to an energy release that literally sank their island
civilization beneath the sea, in their resolve to try and destroy their
rebellious servitors. It was purely retributive, as most of the
surviving winged-men were destroyed in the vengeful blast as well. Huge
tsunamis rolled across the worlds oceans with the sinking of the great
island, devastating distant lands for dozens of miles inland...and
drowning most of the winged-mens remaining coastal installations.
Unfortunately, as a species, they had always liked a nice bit of waterfront.
In the end only a few winged-men remained, too few to overcome the
surviving amorphs. In desperation they used the apex of their biotech to
dissolve their genetic potential into a single gestalt organism...a
powerful and hardy organism. A form capable of surviving for a very long
time indeed...
...the form of the blood dancer I had found writhing above the bowl at
the top of the volcanic pedestal.
They had sealed up the vestiges of their genetic heritage in this single
vessel, and hidden it away in a distant underground citadel. Time passed
and the citadel became ruins, the ruins became wilderness, and
eventually nothing was left except forgotten underground chambers and a
single crooked path to the surface.
Well, not exactly nothing. The installation they had chosen for the
repository of their species potential was selected as it was originally
the strongest and most defensible of all their citadels - for good
reason. This particular set of tunnels also housed a device of such
power and utility that the winged-men dared not keep it anywhere near
their principle island city. Such was the scope of its importance, and
the vital necessity for it to function undisturbed across the ages.
The alien minds in bloodborn communion with me revealed how the
surviving amorphs finally found them, following the emanations from the
singular mechanism housed in the long caves beneath these same upper
chambers. The creatures did not operate with intent so much as by
instinct, the instinct to seek out and destroy their racial tormentors
now that they were free of their domination - this urge had become the
only true emotion they possessed, beyond the need to feed sufficiently
for replication to take place. It was unlikely that the blobs even
understood that they had cornered the very last representatives of their
detested ex-masters on this world - perhaps the last in the Universe -
in these benighted chambers; more likely they simply thought, if such an
elevated concept as true thought were even remotely appropriate for the
processes that drove these creatures, that the presence of the still
active device would eventually herald the return of their nemesis. So
they waited, lairing in a chamber above.
The alien zeitgeist had learned as much of myself and of future humanity
as I had learned of them and their sojourn on Earth, for the empathic
image-driven connection between us was two way in nature. I would have
tried to deny them this, but I had no skill at this invasive form of
information exchange.
Besides...I only realized how much they really knew when they made me
the offer.
---
ENDS PART TWENTY FOUR ( LC 6.2.24 )