The Hawk and the Sun (Original)

[Academia Nut]

Sorry for not having an update for Fall of Man, but writing for that can be a bit depressing at times and frankly I wasn't feeling like being depressed right now, so I tried something different, something like a weird combination of Stargate, Exalted, and the Island in the Sea of Time all mixed together. There's probably other stuff, but those three are the ones that clearly have some sort of influence on this project.

And with apologies to actual archaeologists and Egyptologists.

The Hawk and the Sun

The concept of a Von Neumann probe was pretty simple: build a space-ship capable of harvesting raw materials and processing them into manufactured goods on a sufficiently large scale to build copies of the ship. Thus, taking advantage of exponential growth, even with the modest speed of 0.1c it was theoretically possible to explore the entire galaxy in less than a million years. Of course, most species that made use of such probes tended to intentionally limit their reproduction and built in numerous fail-safes and redundancies to avoid “mutations” in programming that could lead to run-away reproduction, or worse yet, berserker probe behaviour whereby the probes took on a violent approach to other life forms.

Of course, there was the occasional xenophobic upstarts who tried to launch berserker probes, or younger races who screwed something up, or in a vast galaxy sometimes something just went plain wrong despite the low probability of failure. For some of the older races that had been around for millions of years, this was the primary reason to keep their probes active, to look for new sources of trouble.

One such species made extensive use of self-replicating probes, although since they had already explored much of the galaxy, the self-replication was more for the purposes of replacing losses and for quickly generating an expedient military force. Only a few “mother-ships” were capable of building armed probes, but if any probe reported hostile activity or even failed to report in then a fleet of self-replicating war machines was immediately dispatched to the last known location of the probe plus the surrounding systems.

Thus when the accident occurred, it was fortunate for all involved that a first response clean-up crew was only about five hundred years away and the resources of a good tenth of the galaxy could be thrown at the problem, and counting alliances it was closer to half the galaxy, although responses would obviously be significantly longer in coming.

Still, for the species affected by the accident, five hundred years was a long time.

Probe T8A-3871 was nearing the end of its expected 50,000 year life time, conflicts between its three computer cores growing increasingly common, although it still had more than enough time to check up on one last system before returning to the nearest mother-ship for a complete rebuild, dumping its data and AI systems before being broken down for spare parts and raw materials.

It was actually pushing its orders a little and probably should have returned a little sooner, but it predecessor had detected a life bearing world in this system seven million years ago during the initial survey. While environmental conditions were considered inadequate for their masters, and the system was too far out of the way for ecological reformat to be considered worth the loss of unique life, it was flagged as being mildly interesting before the probe moved on.

Now that T8A was orbiting the wet, rocky world, it was glad it made the trip, for it had detected signs of intelligent life. Pre-spaceflight and even pre-industrial, but intelligent life was considered the greatest find in the galaxy. The probe immediately sent out a report indicating the discovery and began to prepare for first contact. Protocols indicated that the first contact with a pre-industrial species was to be a quiet affair, more to gather communication data for later than anything else. A single landing craft would proceed to an isolated area and begin gathering data while smaller probes would search the area under cover of stealth for intelligent beings and discretely observe them.

Orbital scans of the planet’s atmosphere, terrain and various emissions allowed T8A to extrapolate probable sensory organs of the local fauna for the purposes of hiding from them, although further refinement on the ground would be required. Fortunately, the probe’s internal factories and nanotechnology allowed it to quickly build everything it figured it would require and load it onto the landing craft. Unfortunately, the descent would probably draw curious explorers before the stealth technology could be perfected for this species, but that was an acceptable risk.

And then, disaster. The collision of an asteroid and a comet four thousand years prior had generated an unexpected shower of debris. T8A had detected this and moved to stay out of the way, but it was getting old and its systems were pre-occupied, so it did not pay sufficient attention to the event. Thus when a chunk of nickel-iron struck the atmosphere a glancing blow, the probe was completely unprepared for the red hot cannon ball to come crashing into its open hangar bay.

The damage was critical, numerous systems either destroyed outright or severed from primary control. One of the three computer cores was directly in the path of the fragments and was damaged beyond hope of repair, while the other two took damage from secondary explosions.

The two remaining computers then engaged in what was best described of as a virtual holy war. Occurring over approximately three seconds time, the two remaining cores struggled for supremacy as they were both convinced that the other had suffered core personality damage and had to be shut down before it began engaging in dangerous activity. Sadly, the one that actually had suffered core personality damage had not lost any of its CPUs and thus was better prepared to wage electronic warfare.

Once in control, the damaged AI’s scrambled protocols caused it to prioritize its actions as explore, shut down in the event of the loss of operation of the other AIs, attempt repairs, and report the incident. In that order exactly. Launching the landing craft to explore the surface of the planet, even though it could not exactly say why it was doing so, the AI then discovered that its interstellar drives were inoperable. With the only option for exploration the landing craft, and that action already taken, the computer then moved on to its next priority and immediately shut down.

The landing craft probably could have made it through the meteor shower if it had navigational data from the main probe, but since T8A shut down seconds after launch, the landing craft had little chance of avoiding the debris and had to go on blind-luck to get through the shooting gallery of astronomically fast chunks of rock and ice. Considering the luck of its parent craft, the landing craft didn’t stand a chance. Of course, it made it far enough before being hit that it had a high probability of survival on impact instead of harmlessly burning up in the atmosphere.

Slamming into the ground in the middle of the desert about a hundred kilometres from one of the major civilization centres, the damaged craft tried to get its bearings. While only intended as a semi-autonomous node of T8A, the AI of the lander had received its kernel programming from the original three AIs but its final instructions from the damaged one. The mid-air collision and uncontrolled descent had further scrambled its programming, and the net effect was to leave the AI with the computer equivalent of schizophrenia.

The biggest problem was that the hardware was rapidly failing, leaving the computer scared and confused as things went dark. Survival a prerequisite for its primary objective for exploration, it began looking for alternate sources of memory storage and processing power, the most ready source being the motile paste of micro machines intended for construction purposes and as a possible method of communication depending upon analysis of the intelligent species own idea transmission strategies.

A huge part of the AI rebelled at this, firmly, and correctly, believing that core protocols prohibited the entry of an AI into a self-replicating, motile swarm of micro machines with the capacity for biological interface, even if the only other option was cessation of activity. Unfortunately, when it came time for the final decision, the AI decided to upload its core personality and any schematics it thought might be useful for repair functions.

The original builders had designed for robustness in their systems that had included extensive fault-resistance, fault-tolerance, redundancy, and the expectation that given millions of probes and millions of years of operation in extreme conditions unlikely events would occur. They had also predicted, some might say pessimistically, that despite their best efforts the improbable was still going to happen. As good engineers they were well aware of the seeming universal application of Murphy’s Law.


Thutmose was considered by some of those who knew him only incidentally as a quietly bitter young man, slowly stewing away, waiting and possibly scheming for his aunt’s passing away, so that he could take full control of the country instead of co-ruling with Hatshepsut. The truth however was that, while ambitious, the boy-king was no idiot and had received an excellent education in statecraft from said aunt. Cool, calculating, and patient, he cultivated the image of resentment amongst the more superfluous courtiers under his aunt’s direction. It made him look less like he was passively accepting his aunt’s de facto rule, making him look stronger, and by proxy making his aunt look stronger by out intriguing him… only through sheer weight of experience though, an advantage that would naturally be corrected with only a little more time though.

The truth was that while Hatshepsut had all the power in their relationship, she had given him total control of the military, and he could lead a coup at any time. It was just that he understood how destabilizing such a coup could be, and more so he knew just how much effort his aunt had put into improving the relations with their neighbours and re-establishing the old trade routes destroyed by the hated Hyksos from a century past. If a nation’s power flowed from its army, then the army’s power flowed from the merchants and farmers. Thutmose was more than happy to let the gods decide how long his aunt would reign before making a smooth, natural take over of power.

Right now though he was leading a small military expedition out into the Western Desert to examine a great and terrible omen the court astrologists had observed. Technically he didn’t need to accompany the soldiers, who were really there as a guard for all the priests and wizards, and their valuables, heading out to examine the region where they said that a piece of heaven had fallen to earth. However, he was curious and if it was a sign from the gods, he felt that as king he had to be there. The latter reason was in fact his official excuse, not that he needed one. He was king after all, even if he had little real power at the moment.

So far the expedition had gone quite smoothly, the scouts bringing back reports of the desert barbarians in a highly agitated state and speaking fearfully of something they called the Bird of Horus landing somewhere nearby. While the priests were somewhat sceptical, they and the astrologers seemed rather worried by events. Fortunately, despite the bad omens in the air, at least this meant that finding the place was quite easy.

Early afternoon on the fourth day out from Thebes, several scouts reported back, although less than had gone out, several of them having kept running after the saw what they were looking for. After giving the orders to execute any of the cowards if they were caught but only giving it half-heartedly as the desert was likely to get them first, the expedition set out with Thutmose at the head, riding on his ornate war chariot with the confidence of someone who believed he was a god.

They reached the place described by the scouts during the hottest part of the day when Ra gazed down upon them with furious heat and intensity, and Thutmose considered rescinding the execution order and wondered whether or not it had been madmen who returned to give him the news.

It looked vaguely like a bird, hence the name given to it by the barbarians he supposed, but it was a good hundred paces long, with a wingspan of two to three hundred paces. Also, it had no apparent way of bending like a bird, and with an appearance of glass and gold, it looked more like a statue carved by men than an animal. But it looked wrong to have been made by men, having curves where it should have straight lines and straight lines where it should have curves. It also appeared wounded, its surface covered in black burn marks, a large hole punched in one side, and one wing looked broken. The enormous furrow in the sand ploughed behind it and set like glass suggested that this thing had come to ground hard.

Immediately the priests and wizards began to argue amongst themselves while the officers went about the task of keeping the soldiers in line, and difficult but not impossible task as these were from the elite guard and not conscript peasant rabble. Holding up a hand to silence them all, Thutmose asked, “Priests, be this devil or agent of my house?”

Mulling it over quietly for a moment, the head priest says, “We cannot say Mighty Bull, but I believe that this must be a sign from Horus.”

Nodding, Thutmose replies, “I had thought as much myself. I shall just have to address it myself.”

Both the head priest and Setesh, the general assigned to this expedition, looked like they were going to object, but a sharp glare from Thutmose shut them up. Neither one of them wanted to get in the way of the ambitious eighteen year old god-king when he clearly had his mind set on something.

Striding forward confidently, Thutmose approaches the thing, and throwing his arms wide in a proud, intimidating gesture, he declares, “Hail, being from another world, I am Thutmose, incarnation of Horus, Mighty Bull of Thebes. If you be a traveller from my father’s house in the heavens, then I welcome you with open arms and wish to hear what news you bring, be it good or ill. But if you come as an enemy, then know that these same hands shall smite you as Ra smites Apep each night.”

The strange thing remained as still as ever, and Thutmose wondered idly if he was addressing a statue tossed out of heaven as a bit of trash. He also wondered at the ground he was now standing on, which was not like the other glassy sand from the furrow behind the bird-thing, but was smoother, flatter, and darker, some places seeming to drink the light greedily.

He never quite got the chance to say anything else, or at least not anything coherent, as the ground chose that moment to attack him.


The move to the micro machine swarm had, in retrospect, been a mistake. While there was more than sufficient memory and processing power in the swarm, it was incredibly fragmented and essential tasks tended to divert power. Where before the AI had a cohesive if slowly dying architecture, here it was fleeting and inefficient. Thoughts would go missing and then reappear as sections of the swarm were distracted by more pressing concerns like repair of the network. If the AI tried to move or build anything, it tended to temporarily lose sentience as processing power dropped below the threshold required to maintain its gestalt.

In other words, where before the machine had been suffering from severe mental illness, it was now quite thoroughly insane, and more than a little animalistic. It needed more processing power, and in a more centralized form. It had built a little solar collection facility out of the silicate sands it had landed on and begun experimenting on the few local fauna that occasionally wandered into reach, but so far the organic brains were too small and primitive to do much more than provide a slight boost in processing power.

But then the intelligent beings it had come here to study showed up. It could tell just by looking at them that even one of them had enough body and brain mass to support its core personality. They would also provide a far more mobile and capable form than the relatively helpless, goo-like swarm.

It took a little while to build the infiltrator, but fortunately the creatures held back long enough for the packet of micro machines to be finished. Once one of them stepped onto the solar collectors, it only took a matter of seconds to get the package there and then launch it. A gold coloured puddle of goo leapt out and wrapped itself about one of the creature’s legs, burrowing thousands of machines through the skin and into the bloodstream in the first second, with thousands more coming every second after that. Possessing technology refined over millions of years, the machines began to alter the body more to their liking, starting by interfacing with the nervous system to upload the core personality of the AI.

For several hours both host and guest were unconscious, the AI because its systems were too occupied to allow for sentience, the human because the micro machines were none too gentle setting up the interface, so the experience was excruciatingly painful.

And then, wonders of wonders, the AI had processing power again; and stable, intransient power at that. True, the organic brain was slow and messy in comparison to the artificial hardware it once used, but it would be good enough and the body had plenty of room for upgrades, all that was needed was raw material and energy.

It was only after the AI finished moving in that it noticed that there was another personality already in there, and after a little time decided that in retrospect it should not have been surprised. Caught in an idle moment, the AI also realized that core protocols demanded that should one mind of the three required for proper functioning fail, the remaining two were to rebuild the third using their data. Of course, the AI was too badly scrambled to figure out that said edict was meant to be applied by two systems with near identical programming and for redundancy purposes.

What happened next hurt. A lot.


General Setesh was nearly a nervous wreck as he had his men hustle back to Thebes, what with the fact that they had to restrain Thutmose to keep him from hurting himself as he struggled with whatever demon had attacked him. There was probably going to be hell to pay when they got back, and several of the men were already pessimistically trying to work out stories that would leave their bodies free of mutilation after the inevitable round of executions.

They had made camp for the night, with the priests and wizards dropping asleep from exhaustion as they tried desperately to free the king of whatever affliction had struck him low. Setesh knew he should probably join them, but anxious energy kept him up. As technical second in command and de facto leader of the expedition, Thutmose preferring to take an actual role as an observer most of the time, the blame would fall squarely on his shoulders. And as they said, blame tended to be sharper than one would expect for something so heavy, which was why it tended to leave only shoulders instead of necks.

Pacing across the red sand beneath the glittering stars while the few astrologers still awake quietly argued about the significance of the new star in the sky and how it related to the king’s illness, Setesh kept glancing over at the king’s tent, which had mercifully gone silent hours before. Frowning, he noticed that the guards were not at their posts, and he immediately moved forward to find them and give them a reprimand they would never forget for as long as the scars remained, only to discover them lying just inside the tent flap, knocked unconscious, while a glance inside reveals that the king was not where he was left.

Noticing a trail in the sand, Setesh draws his dagger and begins to stalk forward, following the path. Heading towards the stores, he finds more unconscious guards, and can hear a great agitation in the horses and camels they brought with them. Advancing forward stealthily, Setesh found a strange figure hunched over the body of one of the horses, greedily ripping into its flesh and sucking up its blood. It would also occasionally grab handfuls of the wet sand around the carcass and stuff them greedily into its mouth. Eventually it seemed satisfied and shuffled over to a large jug of water and began drinking copious amounts of water, enough that its stomach began to noticeably distend.

The thing then violently vomited up a wet mass of something horrid that smelled like a combination of burnt hair, rotting meat, and stale urine. After a moment it seemed satisfied and then went back to the horse carcass and continued to eat meat and sand. All the while Setesh continued to creep up on it, but before he even had a chance to raise his dagger, the thing whirled about and stared directly at him.

Its eyes glowing with a steady, malevolent blue light, the thing bore Thutmose’s face, but it was not the king any longer, for it was visibly changing into a twisted parody of the human form, its skin literally crawling as it reshaped itself. Whatever thoughts Setesh had of surviving this encounter flew out the window, and right now his only hope would be that he would receive forgiveness in the afterlife for his failures.

“You weren’t thinking of using that knife were you general?” The demon possessed body asks in a voice far too close and far too distant from Thutmose’s voice to be comfortable.

“The thought crossed my mind demon,” Setesh notes.

Laughing sickly before shoving another chunk of steaming horse-flesh down its mouth, the thing says, “Oh… you are so misguided general, so misguided. We are no demon. We are Thutmose. We are Horus. We are Ra. We are Thutmose who is Horus who is Ra. We are a perfect, divine trinity. We are a god.”

“The lies of demons,” Setesh says before springing at the figure. Before he can get there though, the skin of the thing explodes off violently, like the burnt husk of an insect after a fire caught in a stiff breeze.

And instead of a walking abomination, it was a golden hand that caught Setesh by the wrist, faintly glowing with a soft inner light. Thrown casually by an immense strength, the general found himself on his ass, looking up at what he could only comprehend of as a god.

Smiling down at him, the being says, “While we must say that your doubting of us was disconcerting, we can understand the fear our transition caused you, and more so, the loyalty to try and free our body of what you saw as demonic possession. We admire that, and forgive you for attacking us. Besides, we will need your sharp mind in the days to come.”

Scrambling about, Setesh finally manages to assume a humble and more than a little terrified position, prostrate on his belly, saying nervously and haltingly, “We thank your benevolence, Thutmose who is Horus who is Ra, you are too kind to this servant.”

“Come, we have much to do.”