CthulhuTech: Brave New World

[Academia Nut]

Massively exposition heavy chapter again. Sorry.

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Special Services had a peculiar book that they only allowed top agents to access, a tome that was more illegal than the Necronomicon to possess if you did not have the authorization to read it. The reasoning was not because it was particularly sanity blasting, although it could be, or that it caused occult sympathies. In fact, it was somewhat mild in comparison to the more infamous occult texts. No, the problem with it was that it was incredibly bad for morale if read by the uninitiated.

Titled the Secret History of the Natural World, it was written shortly after the end of the Second World War by a geology professor from the now obliterated Miskatonic University. A collaborative effort by the professor, several of his students, and a few unknown contributors who were likely to have been involved in the occult, it was suppressed by the United States government on ‘moral grounds’ shortly after its first printing. Only a few copies survived, the most well known edition being the first book bound by the printers that was quietly shoved into the back of the Miskatonic science library, probably by one of the authors, where it remained, untouched for decades. It resurfaced in the mid-90s when the collection was given a full catalogue to comply with the new electronic system being introduced.

It then drifted about in the shadows of academia for another forty years, slowly accumulating anonymous commentaries and updates on the science that was inaccurate but not completely wrong. Finally all known copies were acquired by the Ashcroft Foundation in the late 2030s as part of their big push to acquire more knowledge for the infant arcane sciences. Realizing what they had, they quietly buried it for essentially the same reasons the US had done so a century earlier: fear of a public panic if the implications within got out, especially now that they had so much more data to back up the claims within.

After the first Arcanotech War the Ashcroft Foundation had quietly turned the book over to the NEG which in turn let only the OSS look at it, for while incredibly useful to those combating cults and aliens, the average human being was simply not psychologically capable of handling the contents in a rational way. This was because the average human being was not rational to start with and the contents were highly rational.

In short, the Secret History of the Natural World was a unified collection of archaeological, geological, and paleontological reports with various accounts, some eyewitness and some from older texts, interspersed to demonstrate the origins of certain legends and mythology. It was cold, rational, scientific, backed up all claims with evidence, and told the story of the rise and fall of alien civilizations on Earth spanning a period of nearly four billion years. It explained the origin of life on Earth, and told of empires that moved at paces that made the continents seem quick.

To the average member of Homo sapiens, human or Nazzadi or otherwise, it was too much. People lived their lives in tiny, protective bubbles. They had to assume that they were special, that they held a privileged place in the cosmos; that their lives mattered, even if it were simply in the sense of being a part of humanity in general. The Secret History shattered that illusion. Their enemies had been in the Solar System for tens or even hundreds of millions of years and had slowly crushed the beings that could be considered the progenitors of all life on Earth, who were even more impossibly ancient.

The book stripped their enemies of their divinity, but in some ways that was worse. Gods could be fought, and even Jacob could only be overcome with trickery. No, the book stripped the Great Old Ones of their mystique and divinity and left behind only the raw power of a combine thresher bearing down upon a frightened nest of field mice. The entire species had been born, lived, and gone extinct while these creatures slumbered through the night, and the longest lived human civilizations were less substantial than sparks struck from flint.

For the religious sensibilities of the 20th century officials who had originally banned the book, it was too much. Still rejecting the truths of science that said that toppled man from his place of grace, they could not cope with the idea that not only was man not created in the image of some perfect being, but that he descended from the cast off slime of alien beings that neither looked like nor cared for the products of their work. For the military sensibilities of the 21st century officials that kept the book suppressed, the truth that man’s struggle for supremacy for Earth was neither the first nor the greatest of such wars would do no good for public morale.

Only a select few could be trusted to read it, those who did not think like their common fellows. To those who had already lost that protective bubble, who knew at a fundamental level that there was nothing special or unique about themselves or humanity, the book was an invaluable resource. Even if there was nothing special about the apes that stood upright and learned to speak, that made their struggle no less important. In fact, it made it all the more important, for humanity had yet to make its mark on the universe. Humanity would not be special until it made itself special, and that was something worth fighting for.

If the knowledge that the Migou had been in the Solar System since at least the mid-Mesozoic was demoralizing to some, it was a keen insight into their behaviour for Ruth. A being that lived for thousands or even millions of years had such a radically different way of looking at things than a human that there were ways to exploit the dissonance. Beings like the Migou were frightfully intelligent and had millions of years of experience to fall back on, but they were also slow and methodical. Where a human would demand a good answer tomorrow, the Migou would wait for the perfect answer in a century. Their advances in the Aeon War were creeping and methodical, securing their territory so that it could not be reclaimed, pushing their borders ever forward with all the inevitability of a glacier advancing during an Ice Age.

Most thought it impossible to seize the initiative from beings with the intellect and experience of the Migou, but Ruth had done it once by exploiting the nuggets of knowledge extracted from the Secret History. The Migou only looked like they always had operational initiative in military engagements because they had the time to have a plan prepared for almost every contingency – emphasis on almost. If you could think of something they could not anticipate then they had no plan and little capacity to improvise and adjust. They had to think out what was going on, and even if they were more intelligent they always assumed that they had decades to ponder things over. So Ruth had proposed that the way to fight the Migou was with insanity. Not stupidity or recklessness, but by looking at the problems in a way so divorced from reality that angles no rational being would consider became evident. It also required the sort of species wide willingness to believe in a fantasy over reality while still remaining grounded that the human race was disgustingly good at.

The results had stacked up the corpses of the Migou and their puppets like firewood and the bugs had been forced to glass the site of the battlefield from orbit, inflicting far more casualties on their own forces than the NEG and opening up a hole in their defences. Unfortunately the generals did not immediately capitalize on their success and then used the results rather than the process. When the plan was tried a second time it did not go at all well for the NEG, much to Ruth’s irritation.

Now she returned to that method for confronting the new threats around them all, and once again she turned to the Secret History for hints.

“The worms, indeed all catalogued life on this world, feature biochemistry that is alien yet recognizable to a biologist from Earth. In fact, analysis indicates that life on this world uses left-handed deoxyribonucleic acid for genetic material. In the face of comparison to other entities, the similarity of not only basic compounds such as nucleic acids, carbohydrates, amino acids, and fatty acids but the chirality of all of the above only one reasonable conclusion can be reached: a common ancestor is shared and that all differences are derived from billions of years of speciation in different environments. While the location and even time of this world is unknown, all life on Earth is known to have a common ancestor that came from the stars: the shoggoth,” Ruth said into a recorder, a grim tone in her voice as she prepared herself. If this was to be her last will and testament then she wanted it as detailed as possible.

“From finds in the primordial cities of the Elder Things, creators of the shoggoths, it is known that they were capable of exerting some sort of control over their creations. While early theories considered this a form of hypnotic suggestion, reinterpretation of the evidence in the light of more recent discoveries suggests that some form of telepathic communication was used. It is indeed hypothesized by those with access to such information that parapsychic ability in humans is derived from reawakened functions still buried in the most ancient genetic codes inherited from our progenitors. This has interesting implications in that it should be easier for two organisms descended from shoggoths to interact telepathically, a prediction that has been difficult to test properly due to the fact that entities not sharing similar descent tend to exhibit extreme hostility towards each other,” Ruth continued while pulling on the body glove that went under her armour to regulate temperature.

“However, in comparison to attempts at telepathic communication with entities such as Migou or bakhi, interaction with mind worms is much more coherent. While consistently hostile and their only attempts at interaction are psychic fear attacks, it could be said that they are communicating, just their communication is so primitive it is closer to the message delivered by a fist to the face than the Gettysburg Address. Also, there are two additional facts that we find intriguing,” Ruth explained to posterity before pausing to inhale while getting the body glove up over her breasts. Damn things were not the easiest things to wriggle into.

Once she had the glove properly on, which was considerably more comfortable than the in-between state, Ruth continued and said, “The first interesting note is how the worms interact with each other. When a worm is born it is psychically linked to its parent, which also links it to its siblings, and its parent’s siblings, and so on to create a telepathic network. Some describe it as a hive mind, but upon further analysis it is more of a distributed mind, in that each individual worm acts like a neuron in an overall network. This is borne out by the fact that worms from different groups do not interact psychically with each other. If worms from two different groups are brought close they do not behave aggressively towards each other, but neither do they form any sort of telepathic bonding. In this way, we have identified five distinct groups from the main assault on the base, that if they could coordinate could form a new group large enough to break through our warding, but as it is their efforts are too divided to breach our defences.”

Ruth pauses to consider what to say next while she starts to connect up the feeds for the electronics and coolants for her armour. After she had decided on her words, she said, “Interestingly enough, while we can suppress their telepathic senses and attacks via warding even when they are clearly isolated members of the same group can still locate each other. However, the strength of this connection can only be made under very specific conditions. Thus far we have been able to observe all artificial permutations of conditions due to the fact that the worm life cycle is exceedingly quick, and the oldest worm in captivity is only four months. Getting them to reproduce properly was rather tricky as their reproductive cycle is parasitoid in nature, and if a host for the eggs is not found the eggs will hatch inside the parent and begin to consume the parent and each other if not implanted within a few hours. While we presume that there must be some other method in the wild to sustain such high populations, we have been forced to use artificially grown neural matter electrically stimulated via LAI controlled systems to replicate human mental activity enough to induce the worms to attack and implant their eggs or larvae.”

Ruth had to pause to blanch slightly before adding on, “I leave it up to the philosophers to determine whether or not we are creating actual minds just to feed them to the worms, but it is currently necessary. In any case, by altering the hatching conditions, we have been able to gather an enormous amount of information in the past five months. Such as the fact that under the right conditions it is possible to implant an egg without having it hatch right away. We suspect this has to do with the worm life cycle in the wild, but in any case it explains why there are separate groups of worms as if an egg hatches more than fifty metres from any adult worm then it will not ‘imprint’. So far we have not seen collections of individual worms form new groups, but if an individual is brought close to an already established group then it will be permanently incorporated into the group. Also, if a worm is separated from the group but then imprints its hatchlings then the parent and hatchlings are not part of a new group but still members of the old one. While we have not been able to fully test how much separation of distance and generation plays a role, it appears that once the connection is made only the death of all members of the group can extinguish the whole.”

Her armour now mostly on, Ruth hesitated, resting her hand over the trauma plates she was going to add on. Chewing on her lip for a moment she then said, “The second salient point today is that when we first arrived already established telepaths reported a hostile reaction, while I personally encountered a large, powerful mind that sought to integrate me into it. While both phenomena died away after a few days, the presence of another mind somewhere on this world remains felt. Since I only started manifesting after arrival here, in light of recent information on the worms it is possible that there is some sort of species-wide over mind that was confused by my psychic presence and thought I was new hatchling and attempted to bring me into the overall collective. The implications if this is correct are disturbing and quite frankly terrifying, but it also offers us an opportunity. We have isolated by warding and distance a single worm so that it is not part of any group, and then induced it to produce eggs which we have similarly isolated. We will now attempt to induce hatching while in the presence of a telepath… namely me.”

Securing her helmet, Ruth transferred the recording duties over to her helmet pick-up and said, “While the risk to my body is low, this is territory that has never been explored before. We are going to attempt to make peaceful telepath contact with an alien life form. The risks to sanity are… unknown. But if we want to survive on this world we must learn to exploit every part of it, to not fear the unknown. If anything, we must grow to make the unknown fear us.”

With that Ruth clicked off the recorder. Lucien, who had also been donning his armour in silence while Ruth talked, asked her, “You ready?”

“Fuck no. Let’s do this anyway,” Ruth replied.

[JonB]

You know, I've always wondered what it was like for the Talent controlling the boil.

[Academia Nut]

You know, I've always wondered what it was like for the Talent controlling the boil.

We're going to find out!

A pity it is way too early for Locusts of Chiron. Since there is a whole plot about how the first talent to bond got fried by an enemy faction, the controller obviously has to be relatively close to the boil. And Locusts of Chiron can be made well before anti-grav tech is available, so the only way in my mind to actually get the talent to follow along is for the locusts to pick them up.

Which is so incredibly bad ass when you think about what the scene would actually look like.

[barricade]

Yes and no. You're almost certain to get needlejet tech and/or 'Chopper tech before you get the needed advancements for Locusts. So having the Talent in a one-person 'mini' needlejet, or more likely, a 'Chopper, is much more likely. Although I DO wonder WTF they're using in the 'Choppers reactors, considering the initial reactor it uses is fission, and yet it can run out of fuel??? Umm....yeah. Needlejets I can at least understand considering they need a reaction mass to shoot out the back, but a 'Chopper still uses a rotary wing. A fission reactor + rotary wing means you should, by rights, be able to keep it in the air until the crew falls asleep at the controls. With the higher tech reactors, like fusion or quantum, it makes even less sense.

*sighs*

At least the Isles of the Deep make partial sense in that the aquatic 'vector' of the worms forms an enormous floating 'island' made up of interconnecting strands of xenofungus, with the worms acting like both the tentacles of a jellyfish, a propulsive system (they wiggle, the 'isle' moves), and also they can come up to the surface of said island and attack anything on the surface. So the Talent that is running it all might just be in a small flotation/habitation area at the dead center of it. Gets kinda scary once you realize that Demon Boil class Isles of the Deep are measured in multiple metric kilometers across. No wonder they can carry a HELL of a lot of cargo up on top. Unless you've got the Maritime Control Center and Cruisers, a max evolved IotD will 9 out of 10 be a better choice, especially as they can actually punch back if you try to take one down (gets even better if you have Dream Twister & Neural Amplifier too).

[Academia Nut]

Slight detour due to a minor argument Barricade kicked off elsewhere. Word of advice, proving an engineer wrong leads to him fixing it, even if it causes your eyes to glaze over in the process. The follow is pure, 100% technobabble with no bearing on the story but needed to be written in order to get it out of my head. One more quick section like this will hopefully exorcise the demons (of the Maxwell variety) and then I can get back to writing the actual story.

Those of you prone to glazed eye syndrome are recommended to look away. This ain't going to be pretty.

Standard Laser

The standard military grade laser used by the NEG is a marvel of materials engineering, in that the active element of the laser is a near unitary piece of material despite the entire system being a triple stage laser. A long, tapered cylinder covered in protruding fins and sparkling with a riot of colour, the element outside of its standard shrouding looks like an incredibly gaudy club. This assessment is actually not that far from the truth as it could theoretically be used to bash in someone’s skull and then be hooked up to the rest of the laser system and successfully fired. In combat these elements typically survive the destruction of the rest of the combat platform carrying them unless they suffer a direct hit from a weapon of comparable or greater power.

The first and largest segment of the element is a three-dimensional phased array of short-wavelength IR semi-conductor laser diodes. This is the initial stage of the laser and the area of primary heat production due to the presence of resistive current flow, yet it is also the region of the lowest energy density. The wavelengths of light produced are specially tuned to avoid interaction with the suspension medium that forms the solid infrastructure upon which the diodes are embedded. Because of this fine tuning of materials properties the diodes can be stacked three dimensionally without occluding each other, allowing for a much higher photon production density than a two-dimensional structure would permit. While the laser diodes are all aligned to point forward, the entire section is wrapped in a dielectric mirror tuned to the wavelength of the emitted photons.

The second stage of the element is an optically pumped solid-state non-linear optical material. Every two photons from the first stage impinging on this material produce a single photon of half the wavelength. The interface between the first stage and the second stage is designed to be transparent to the first stage photons and reflective to the second stage ones, thus permitting only one direction of flow for the photons.

The final stage is the smallest and most difficult to fabricate as it is a three-dimensional metamaterial that not only acts as another optically pumped lasing material but as a collimator and focusing lens. Very precisely designed and manufactured, these materials allow the transmission of only one wavelength of light in one of the closest known natural approximations to the Dirac delta function. While they do not allow the transmission of other wavelengths of light, it is possible for integer multiples of the permitted wavelength that enter at the same time – as allowed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle’s definition of ‘same time’ – to be combined into a single, allowed photon. This process is also extraordinarily directional and thus the photons that exit must be coherent with each other. While the laser is operating all energy pumped into the system not lost to waste heat is flowing through the final stage and the energy densities would be enough to instantly vaporize the material if the photons interacted with the atomic matrix directly. As it is, the photon compression and collimation process also decouples photon-phonon interaction processes at the relevant wavelengths such that very little energy is transferred between the beam and the element.

Despite best attempts, it is impossible for any process to be completely efficient, and even with transmission or reflection coefficients at four or even five nines the sheer energy densities involved means that the suspension media is one of the most important factors. The first two stages are supported by a different diamond derived material (DDM) that has been doped to have as little interaction with the relevant wavelength of light in that section as possible. The incredibly stiff carbon-carbon bonds of the diamond lattice are phenomenal carriers of phonons, allowing for rapid conductance of waste heat away from the sensitive lasing materials. The shape of these DDM support structures are also designed to, as best as possible, serve as waveguides to help guide photons that do interact with them either toward their next target or away from the centre of the element.

Outside the layers of dielectric mirrors that encase the core of the element are many DDM fins that serve as large surface areas for primary coolant to come into contact with, and a few of these fins are actually penetrative extensions of the internal DDM structure so that heat can be carried directly from the interior of the element to the exterior, allowing for rapid shedding of waste heat, if at the cost of some desired photons lost to transmission outside the element. The entire element is typically submerged in cryogel, a carbon nanotube aerogel with the interior spaces filled with an engineered paraffin/salt eutectic solution. The carbon nanotubes function to transmit the heat quickly through the entire cooling jacket while the eutectic solution is capable of absorbing and storing enormous quantities of heat. The primary cooling jacket typically has a secondary cooling system, often some form or combination of radiators, air cooling, water cooling, or thermoelectric cooling.

[Erra]

You're right, total eye glaze for me.

As someone who has never played or read anything about either of the source materials used here, your story is still really exciting and entertaining. I would credit that to excellent writing. Can't wait for more!

[Simon_Jester]

Now that was first rate technobabble.

[Academia Nut]

More technobabble.

Gatling Laser

The engineers working on the design for their anti-worm weapon once they decided upon a multi-barrel approach immediately hit upon a difficulty. The first designs they produced would have been multi-barrel arrays, but the bulk of the primary cooling systems would have placed too much space between the individual barrels. Since the best defence against mind worm psychic attacks is distance and the targets are both small and fast moving, the ability of this design to actually hit the worms was deemed insufficient for the effort put into building and fielding it.

Attempts to work around the problem immediately ran into trouble, as moving the elements together by altering the shape and configuration of the primary cooling shrouds kept producing the same results in the simulations: the thermal load on the elements increased to the point where the desired rate of fire increase was negated and again the new design did not give sufficient performance increase over predecessors to warrant its construction and application.

The possibility of additional optics to alter the path of the beams was considered, but in order for the system to have a consistent firing pattern over a wide number of ranges the optics would have to be adjustable and the only way to do that would be the addition of bulky and delicate systems with too high of a probability of failure under battlefield conditions to be of practical use.

The idea was then brought up that the individual barrels could be moved to ensure that they fired in the same place, allowing for a consistent firing pattern. The addition of the mechanisms to spin the barrels was seen as unwelcome, but the design did produce less complexity than prior ones while keeping the high rate of fire and allowing for the accuracy that were the top design priorities. It was also noted that since they were already in motion then they did not need additional fans, they could instead extend the DDM radiators from the first stage cooling out and have them form the core of graphene-plasma steel laminate blades. The interior of the design thus became a turbine.

A final problem was noted in the simulation stage, in that repeatedly firing a laser into a similar region of air had the effect of superheating and even ionizing it, which had the possibility of killing the entire design right then and there, but the decision was made to mount a set of metallic rods over the primary firing position to conduct excess electrical charge in the air away from the barrels. For this effect and the turbine effect the engineers had insufficient data to run a proper simulation and thus the only way to get data was to build and run a real world test type.

[MysteriousDarkLordv3]

[clap-clap] Applause!

Even hard sci-fi requires a talent for technobabble. Yours has the lovely tang of the fantastic combined with just enough hardness to make it credible. Gorgeous! Lovely! The writers of any sci-fi TV series couldn't do better!

[LadyTevar]

*eyes glaze*


I don't need the technobable, when something looks like it will work and be awesome.

[MrCIA]

Couldn't they reverse the pitch of the turbine blades and thus disperse the laser heated air in front of the barrels? Not to mention that you may not want you cooling medium to be pre-heated.

Just because I tend to avoid technobabble in my own stories doesn't mean I don't appreciate it when it's well written. Bravo.

[Academia Nut]

It sat there, a little mottle off-white and brown sphere wrapped in translucent mucus slightly tinted with swirls of orange and pink, nestled into an organic soup of quick grown neurons and nutrient fluid. If one looked closely enough, the patterns on the surface resolved into the features of a tiny, curled up worm; a miniature nightmare incarnate waiting to be unleashed.

On the other side of the transparent barrier, Ruth sat ready to unleash the little monster. Her heartbeat and breathing were both at elevated levels, enough that sedatives might have been administered if not for their known tendency to interfere with parapsychic abilities. Still, she had spent her entire adult life dealing with fear and anxiety, so Ruth could control her own response to this situation. This experiment was important, and she had championed it to go forward. The war on Earth had become impossible to win just as much from the institutional fear of the unknown as from the forces arrayed against them. The only way was forward.

Sitting in the experimental chamber, surrounded on all sides by wards but the tiny bubble of space between her and the egg left open so that she could still attempt to communicate with it. They were not precisely sure what would happen, but the possibility of being able to tap into an alien mind to learn new things about it… and new ways to kill its kind… was too irresistible to pass up.

With the press of a button, Ruth activated the system that would alter the conditions about the egg, forcing the larva to begin hatching. Electrical impulses in the neural soup began to agitate the egg, and the little worm within began to struggle and squirm within its egg. Ruth also began to feel its mind begin to awaken. Tiny, unfinished, and primitive, the worm still managed to send out a powerful, instinctive need to connect to another mind that was blocked by the warding.

Ruth on the other hand was not so hindered. She reached out with her own mind and grasped the psychic probe. Finding no other mind to connect with, the awakening worm reciprocated the gesture.

The effects were… interesting.

In that initial contact, both parties got hit with something they never expected. The worm sought to join its mind to a greater whole, to connect with an ancient network and become part of something more than itself. In a sense, it did so, but it plugged not into a creature of its own ecosystem, but of one infinitely more violent than its own. It pulled over half a billion years of vertebrate evolution from the recesses of Ruth’s mind and bounced it back to her.

Half a billion years of blood and violence, all fuelled by the struggle for survival. Memories encoded upon the genetic structure rose to the surface, the ghosts of an endless parade of ancestors intruding their stories upon Ruth and the worm. Fish swimming in the warm Cambrian seas, tearing into each other with an increasingly sophisticated armoury of weaponry and defences. Amphibians scurrying onto land and the smorgasbord of insects that had abandoned the melee of the oceans millions of years earlier and had missed out on the arms race there to now discover the benefits endoskeletons brought. There were the violent clashes between the synapsids and archosaurs across the dry wastes of Pangaea during the Triassic. Then the story followed tiny early mammals peering out into the world at night, rushing between the legs of the titans that strode the world in between the spaces claimed by alien civilizations. An act of war by one of these groups let the mammals scurry out from the ashes, one group climbing into the trees, only to descend again tens of millions of years later as their forests dried up into savannah.

From there the story became faster and more complex, a whirlwind of activity in a growing steadily ever more intricate and spectacular with each new generation. Hands originally built to grasp branches were easily switched to grasping sticks and rocks, then shaping sticks and rocks. In a geological eye blink the lost apes ascended the mountain of corpses that was the food chain on Earth, strange eyes still watching them but their numbers growing less with each passing year.

From the frozen steppes of Northern Eurasia in the shadow of the glaciers, to the steaming jungles of Africa and Southeast Asia, this tall ape prowled as a predator without peer in its evolutionary history. Even the great titans of prior ages would have just been another bundle of muscle and teeth, a puzzle to be solved by the brains of these creatures. Only two things had the power to effectively bring these monsters of evolution down: the few alien holdouts that had not left for greener pastures or gone into hibernation, or each other.

Tens of thousands of years of conquest, murder, and rape continued the gleeful traditions of life on the planet; with the strong taking what they wanted from the weak, all while a man with skin the colour of the night sky watched from the shadows, the whites of his grinning teeth reflecting the fires of tribal war and frenzy. Yet, for all the horror, the naked apes were more than animals, and the haunting, whistling melodies of bone flutes accompanied by the beat of leather drums filled the night skies. More children were born to love than violence, and some found the capacity to offer the open hand of forgiveness rather than the closed fist of vengeance. The smile of the dark man faded.

The final ten thousand years were a blur of activity as the apes painfully yet triumphantly discovered that for those with intellect, nothing was impossible. Other species, entire ecosystems, were bent to their will, reshaped to their desires. Farmers and herders watered their fields with the blood of their neighbours, and soon the infinitely creative predator turned the brunt of its intellect toward the task of killing itself. For a time the black man’s smile returned before he realized that far from driving themselves towards extinction, these creatures grew ever more numerous, and they were learning that while the strong could crush the weak, the weak could band together and flatten those that would step on them.

The last centuries went past in a blink as the fundamental forces of a hostile universe were exposed to the apes in all their awful glory, and despite the terrible agony they brought, the species refused to turn away. For they had tasted the fruit, and found the painful poisons within just as delicious as the sugars. The final three decades were not the fragments of ancestors past but of living memory, and encompassed all that it meant to be a human in the Strange Aeon, all the horrors and wonders.

All this flooded into the worm, and then back into Ruth through their connection. The worm did not truly have the faculties to appreciate this massive download of information, but the experience changed fundamental pieces of the worm’s wiring. Ruth’s heritage was its heritage now, for all the evil and violence and hope and compassion that entailed.

For Ruth, while the path from the past to present was experienced, she suffered the reverse more acutely. The worm reached out for its identity, but it also demanded to become part of the whole. It demanded to connect into the network, and to her horror, Ruth was forced to comply. While the worm experienced the nightmare of Darwinian evolution, Ruth was forced to gaze into her own self, to see the whole and the parts that made it up.

A hundred billion neurons all joined together in a vast whole by a quadrillion connections, of which none and all could be said to contain the soul. Such dazzling complexity; storms of electrochemical activity racing about, carrying information in methods so complex that the whole could not understand the processes that gave rise to the conflicts within the darkness behind the eyes. Yet this was not all, for the mind not suddenly cease outside the skull, for nerves extended out into the rest of the body, and tides of chemicals communicated between all aspects of the self.

A hundred trillion cells, all communicating with each other in one manner or another. Vast communities of very different creatures all bound together; living out their lives and performing the functions they were built for. The beat of the heart, the waves of breath, the gurgle of the stomach, the percolation of the kidneys, the march of the neutrophils, and the chatter of hormones: these were but a few of all that were just as much a part of Ruth as the crackle of the neurons. Joined together by transcendental forces, they now welcomed a new set of connections into their whole.

The process was best summed up as being like simultaneously losing a limb, being disembowelled, and having both eyes gouged out, but in reverse, and with considerably more pain and disorientation than that implied. Not only did the worm experience the pain of this through their connection, but it also suffered similar if milder connection disorientation as new senses flooded into a brain not meant to handle such an enormous wealth of audio-visual input.

Ruth had the peculiar sensation of hearing her own tortured scream in stereo: once from her own ears and inner ears, and a second time muffled and distorted through the observation glass that separated her from the worm and by the more primitive auditory organ of the creature. She then experienced the truly peculiar sensation of choking while her lungs told her that she was still drawing fresh, clean air.

The worm wanted to panic. Five hundred million years of ancestors wanted to panic. Somewhere within the confused mess of consciousness, the being that sat upon the throne of Ruth’s mind stood up and took the situation in an iron fist. She bulled through the pain, and kept going in spite of the confusion of sensory information. She knew what was happening; she understood where an animal could not. Understanding was humanity’s power, as was the ability to act upon that understanding.

Her fellows were gassing the worm; not knowing what was happening but acting to save her. She had no idea what that would do to her, but she knew that her body was screaming at her to act as surely as if she had a limb caught in the gears of some machine trying to grind it off.

Clenching her jaw shut while still screaming through gritted teeth, Ruth cast out with her mind for a solution. Her peers were unlikely to just knock the worm out if they thought her life was in active danger, and it would take to long to get them to stop while she still had no control over her vocal capacities. The wards also prevented her from attempting to get off a telepathic message.

The senses of the worm were physically weak and the vast psychic components were muffled by the wards, but just because they surrounded Ruth and the worm in three dimensions did not mean that there was no way around them. Maybe it was the combination of their psychic abilities or the fact that Ruth had several orders of magnitude more processing power to work with, but she could feel the D-Cells powering machinery far outside the normal range for the worms to begin siphoning off power.

Her command was clumsy, like the first time a person tried to move a reattached limb, but the worm understood the intent of the order in the general way that Ruth intended. Its abilities immediately followed the path higher dimensional Ruth pointed out and greedily drained the nearest cell of the energies it had squirreled away in other realms. So glutted, new functions awoke in the worm and it immediately expended them.

The containment cage disintegrated in a sphere of expanding telekinetic force, and the worm practical flew out of the shredded matter, moving like a ballistic missile for Ruth. She could feel a new presence nearby as Lucien rushed out of the wards, his abilities activating to come to her defence. Even with his hyper-cognition the ramp up time out of the damping of the wards was too much and he was too slow to prevent the worm from reaching her.

Instead of impacting like an anti-tank round, the worm hit like a wet piece of pasta and immediately began to wriggle about towards the pockets of her armour, hiding itself on her person.

“Ruth!” Lucien cried out in fear and concern.

The shock of integration had waned enough that Ruth managed to get up a hand to forestall him from attempting to telekinetically strip her naked to get the worm off her. After a few moments of heavy breathing she actually started to giggle a bit, a strangely giddy feeling flooding over her, and it took her a moment to realize that the worm was experiencing the effects of an elevated oxygen partial pressure from what its biology was used to. While somewhat distracting, it also served to rapidly bleed off the after-effects of so much pain.

Once she had managed to regain all of her faculties, or at least the ones she had started with before the experiment, Ruth said to Lucien, “It’s okay Lucien. We are… no, I am okay.”

Lucien raised an eyebrow at that and asked, “Hive mind?”

Shaking her head, Ruth had the worm crawl out of its hiding place, inching along her arm to curl about her wrist. She could see the cringe in his eyes and feel his revulsion and fear of the thing through her abilities, while the worm just picked up a target weak enough to attempt to attack. Ruth kept its terrible abilities under control, and she then smiled and said, “I. There is no ‘we’, for that implies separation. The worm is now a part of me.”

Lucien was still distressed, but he managed to ignore the worm and focus on Ruth, the look in his eyes softening somewhat. Finally he replied, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“You’re telling me,” Ruth deadpanned while considering this new part of her body.

[LadyTevar]

wow.

Just. wow.

[Erra]

LOVE IT

That was intense.

[Simon_Jester]

Another good piece, Academia. One wonders whether this is what it's like for the SMAC Talents- the different approach may alter their experience of taking over the boil.

Yes and no. You're almost certain to get needlejet tech and/or 'Chopper tech before you get the needed advancements for Locusts. So having the Talent in a one-person 'mini' needlejet, or more likely, a 'Chopper, is much more likely. Although I DO wonder WTF they're using in the 'Choppers reactors, considering the initial reactor it uses is fission, and yet it can run out of fuel??? Umm....yeah. Needlejets I can at least understand considering they need a reaction mass to shoot out the back, but a 'Chopper still uses a rotary wing. A fission reactor + rotary wing means you should, by rights, be able to keep it in the air until the crew falls asleep at the controls. With the higher tech reactors, like fusion or quantum, it makes even less sense.

Hmm. Problem is most likely one of maintenance: you don't need to refuel, not as such, but you do need to keep patching up bits and pieces. SMAC choppers can be kept out of base for in-game turns (years?!), but they gradually lose hit points in the field until they fall apart. That's not unreasonable for a nuclear-powered helicopter that is kept in the air for mission after mission. Sooner or later it's going to break down in mid-air, because the machinery isn't immortal.

[kh1]

Did I just read correctly, the implication that Ruth now has the ability to siphon D-engines for para-psychic power??

[Erra]

I would imagine that the process of mind melding with the worms (or other things, for that matter) might be made easier after each successful attempt simply because there are more minds to distribute the stress of linking up.

Also, idk how the worms breed, but she might just need one more before she could start making an entire army of worms that are a part of her. One would hope her sanity holds out and could control that many destructive instincts.

[LadyTevar]

Now that I'm home from work and have tie to re-read the chapter, I think I can do better than "wow"


First, I find it interesting that the worm's idea of joining was to almost literally become another organ(ism?) of the human body. When you look at the body as a collection of interconnected, interdependent cellular life, I can see how a primitive being such as a worm could be integrated fairly easily. Aren't there theories about how cellular life went from single cell to multi-cell, by integrating other single-cell organisms inside? I know there is a theory that Mitochondria were swallowed like that.

The second thought is what will happen when there's a few hundred worms, all wanting to be close to Ruth. *shudder* One worm crawling around on me is squicky enough.

[Simon_Jester]

I would imagine that the process of mind melding with the worms (or other things, for that matter) might be made easier after each successful attempt simply because there are more minds to distribute the stress of linking up.

Also, idk how the worms breed, but she might just need one more before she could start making an entire army of worms that are a part of her. One would hope her sanity holds out and could control that many destructive instincts.

SMAC humans manage it; wouldn't be at all surprised if she can.

[Xon]

Did I just read correctly, the implication that Ruth now has the ability to siphon D-engines for para-psychic power??

Technically the mindworm part of Ruth did. If or how she can transfer that para-psychic power to her human body is another question.

[Academia Nut]

Word of warning: I just saw Inception. Expect things to get trippier.

Also, keep that movie away from EarthScorpion, even though it is probably too late.

[Erra]

Word of warning: I just saw Inception. Expect things to get trippier.

I think I just peed a little.

[barricade]

I would imagine that the process of mind melding with the worms (or other things, for that matter) might be made easier after each successful attempt simply because there are more minds to distribute the stress of linking up.

Also, idk how the worms breed, but she might just need one more before she could start making an entire army of worms that are a part of her. One would hope her sanity holds out and could control that many destructive instincts.

IIRC from the fiction & fluff for the worms, its that the human sits at the top of it all as the controlling factor. He/She is the 'brain', while the worms end up as the 'limbs', so to speak. The human in question will feel the pain of a boil being destroyed, but the larger the boil, both the larger and smaller the pain. As that the larger the amount of worms he/she can control, the more the worms can take up the burden of reducing the pain the human feels when one or more worms die. To the point that a worm's natural lifespan, which is weeks at best, won't cause a human to go brain dead if as 'little' as a thousand worms are present - a 'larval boil' at best. Demon Boils can be potentially millions of worms acting in concert much like either an Army Ant colony on the move, or a (natch) Zerg Swarm. The human in question can survive almost the complete destruction of their boil.

Its just that in SMAC/SMAX, the other factions tend to try to kill the Talent controlling the swarm, much like killing an army's general, rather then let an experienced Talent go back and start up a new boil. In-game, that's what happens to your Faction Leader's favorite aide if the boil she controls is lost in combat. They find what's left of her flame-gun cooked body and a none-too-subtle hint that it was deliberate too. One thing I find interesting is that the mindworms utterly HATE, and there's a reason I capitalized that, the two Alien factions. Even the 'Caretaker' one.

Although on the note about the Alien factions, considering that this Colony has access to arcanotech, might they not be able to manufacture the 'alien' versions of PlasmaSteel? I think there's one for an Alt-Neutronium too, but my copy of SMAX won't work on my laptop, so I can't tell - only got SMAC to work. If so, they'll get some very nice defensive bonuses as the very structure of the armor itself repels/is repugnant not only to mindworms, but also the two Alien Factions and their 'flow' senses, at least from what I can remember about a datalink that Cha Dawn said.

[Ethesis]

I would imagine that the process of mind melding with the worms (or other things, for that matter) might be made easier after each successful attempt simply because there are more minds to distribute the stress of linking up.

Also, idk how the worms breed, but she might just need one more before she could start making an entire army of worms that are a part of her. One would hope her sanity holds out and could control that many destructive instincts.

IIRC from the fiction & fluff for the worms, its that the human sits at the top of it all as the controlling factor. He/She is the 'brain', while the worms end up as the 'limbs', so to speak. The human in question will feel the pain of a boil being destroyed, but the larger the boil, both the larger and smaller the pain. As that the larger the amount of worms he/she can control, the more the worms can take up the burden of reducing the pain the human feels when one or more worms die. To the point that a worm's natural lifespan, which is weeks at best, won't cause a human to go brain dead if as 'little' as a thousand worms are present - a 'larval boil' at best. Demon Boils can be potentially millions of worms acting in concert much like either an Army Ant colony on the move, or a (natch) Zerg Swarm. The human in question can survive almost the complete destruction of their boil.

Its just that in SMAC/SMAX, the other factions tend to try to kill the Talent controlling the swarm, much like killing an army's general, rather then let an experienced Talent go back and start up a new boil. In-game, that's what happens to your Faction Leader's favorite aide if the boil she controls is lost in combat. They find what's left of her flame-gun cooked body and a none-too-subtle hint that it was deliberate too. One thing I find interesting is that the mindworms utterly HATE, and there's a reason I capitalized that, the two Alien factions. Even the 'Caretaker' one.

Although on the note about the Alien factions, considering that this Colony has access to arcanotech, might they not be able to manufacture the 'alien' versions of PlasmaSteel? I think there's one for an Alt-Neutronium too, but my copy of SMAX won't work on my laptop, so I can't tell - only got SMAC to work. If so, they'll get some very nice defensive bonuses as the very structure of the armor itself repels/is repugnant not only to mindworms, but also the two Alien Factions and their 'flow' senses, at least from what I can remember about a datalink that Cha Dawn said.

I've got to find the game you are basing all of this from, sounds like an RTS that I managed to miss, and very interesting.

Have enjoyed the fanfic so far. Hmm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier% ... a_Centauri -- now to find it and buy it.

[Ethesis]

I'll be, the complete game is available brand new. Just have to buy it from the English discounters, but the entire price, including shipping and handling and such is still under $10.00. There is a regular volume of them sold by the .uk ebay.