Reborn: Part 1
This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules, and inspired by the Doomed Empire line of miniatures created by Oshounaminis.
“There’s no trees.”
Airn looked up. “What?”
Rishard gestured around the horizon. “No trees. At least, not many. Look, I’m not going to complain about going on a treasure hunt, but I’ve seen Starhost ruins before, and they’re always in jungles or forests. At least there should be some grass. This is just sand and dirt. Barely any life at all. I haven’t even heard any insects buzzing.”
“There are birds,” Airn sighed, turning back to her work. “Shen mentioned seeing one several minutes ago.”
“Yeah, flying overhead,” Rishard leaned on their las-digger. “Probably migrating. I’d feel better if it had stopped by for a bit, but there’s nothing here any birds could want. It’s dead.”
“I promise you, we are in the right spot.” Airn’s glowing mechanical eye blinked, the only sign that she had flipped to the next screen of the file she was looking at. “Satellite positioning puts us within three meters of the target.”
“You sure it’s not malfunctioning?” Rishard stretched his neck, pulling at his arms to work out the kinks. “Maybe a mis-conversion of meters to…whatever measurements the Starhost uses?”
Airn swiveled her head to study Rishard’s face. “You tired of digging already? If you need to quit for a bit, I’m sure your team will help pick up the slack.”
“Push off,” Rishard grumbled. “These things are heavy. You wouldn’t want to give it a go, would you? Put that cyber-arm of yours to use?”
“I need to prepare,” Airn answered after a moment.
With a dismissive snort, Rishard looked back at the dig. “You cultists are all the same. You merge your bodies with steel and then refuse to do anything useful.”
“I assure you, I am being very useful at the moment. When we find the ruins, there will be defenses. The better my tools, the better chances we have of surviving them.”
Rishard shielded his eyes from the bright sun. “Hold up…they’ve stopped digging.”
“Time to take a break, I suppose, same as you?”
“We work in shifts,” Rishard hoisted his las-digger onto his shoulder. “I think we’ve finally found something.”
Shen poured what was left of his precious water ration over his head. The air was burning from the heat of the sun and the multiple las-diggers. It was worth it, though, to stand here in the pit and look at the tunnel they had dug, knowing at its end lay a door that had remained closed for eons. For Rishard, archaeology was a job. For Shen it was a passion. The Human Colonies had survived in the Sirius sector for over a generation, and they still knew so little about their new home. It was dangerous — often times lethal — but with every dig, Shen learned a little more about how things worked in the sector and what had come before them.
The back of Shen’s neck prickled, the sure sign that the Mech-cultist was getting close. Shen wasn’t a particularly powerful psychic or else he’d have been recruited into the HDF or government service in the Great Human Alliance. As it was, he needed to put a lot of effort into getting more than surface-level feelings. He was mostly an empath, gripped with sensations depending on the thoughts of people around him. It made living in a crowded urban center overwhelming, and digging with a small team refreshing.
He turned to see Airn and Rishard crest the edge of the pit and climb down. “Find something?” Rishard called out as he descended. Shen raised a hand in acknowledgment and waited for his boss to reach the mouth of the tunnel.
“Large granite surface,” Shen pulled his camera out of his pocket and showed off the pictures. “Carved ornamentation and a circular indentation; looks like it could be a door. Right where you said it was,” he nodded to Airn. “Pillars on both sides with either a pictographic language or an ancient alphabet.” He glanced at Rishard. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“You can’t tell if its an alphabet or not?” Airn asked, cocking her head to the side.
“If its an alphabet, it’s old enough that its not in our database,” Shen shrugged. “If it’s pictographs, they don’t represent anything we recognize. I mean, have you seen anything like this before?”
Airn took the camera from his hands and slowly shifted through the pictures. “Yes,” she said at last, “This appears to be a primitive variant on the Starhost pictographic language. I should be able to translate it soon enough.”
“Woah there,” Rishard held out his arm to stop Airn from walking towards the tunnel. “Let’s hold on a second.”
“Why?” Airn’s mechanical eye swiveled to take in the two archeologists. “Your team has been supporting the tunnel, yes? It’s safe, we’ve reached a door, and I’d rather see these inscriptions in person. Why wait?”
“There’s a big difference between supported and safe.” Rishard crossed his arms. “Never mind the automated defenses that might be waiting for us, let’s make sure the structure isn’t crumbling to bits before you run in and start opening doors and poking at bricks. There’s still a lot we can learn before digging deeper, and if anything blows away in three more hours, it wasn’t worth exploring anyway.”
It was disconcerting, the way Airn’s body whirred like a machine. She looked back at the tunnel before giving what Shen hoped was a sigh. “Very well. I suppose I can still translate some useful information from your pictures, though I may need to make corrections once we are down the tunnel.”
“Right, well…” Rishard nodded to Shen, “let’s let her translate and go get that drink. Jorj!” He called to a nearby digger who was sitting on a crate. “Get out the sonar and make sure the tunnel and whatever’s behind the door is safe.”
As the digging team moved into action, Rishard ushured Shen towards the water-truck and around to its backside. “Alright,” he said once they were out of Airn’s sight, “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve studied Starhost architecture,” Shen said, keeping his voice low. “I’ve studied their language, and I’ve seen how it evolved over the centuries. It barely evolved at all.”
“You think we’re in the wrong place?” Rishard scratched his chin.
“I don’t know about that,” Shen shrugged, “but I took a sample from one of the pillars. According to my tests, this door and whatever’s behind it is older than the established record of Starhost civilization.”
Rishard blinked. “It’s…how old?”
“Eons,” Shen’s voice was tight. “I’d say it’s long before the Starhost even developed space travel. Which means this is either the Starhost’s ancient homeworld — on the other side of the sector and largely forgotten for millennia — or this is a completely different species’ structure.”
“You think the latter,” Rishard nodded. “Damn it all! If we’ve gone through all this just to find a room full of bones and pottery again…” He ran his hands through his sweaty hair. “Well, we’ll sell what we can, I suppose. Any idea on who this site belonged to?”
“Historically, this region changed hands a hundred times over the centuries, so it could be elvish, dwarvish, DAOist…or some ancient culture long since extinct.”
“Right.” Rishard took a deep breath and tilted his head back. “Right. How are you feeling?”
Shen recognized the real question. “I’m okay. The team is mostly glad for the break, and Airn is certainly excited. She’s not afraid or anxious, so if she’s lying she isn’t too worried about us finding out.”
“Right,” Rishard rubbed his chin for a moment before clapping Shen on the shoulder. “Before we head down, unlock the armory. I don’t want to get caught with our pants down, yeah?”
Shen gave a nod. “You still expect trouble from the Starhost?”
“I expect trouble from everyone,” Rishard grimaced. “Let’s just say I’d rather not need them than have them not be available.”
“Sure boss, whatever you say.” Shen watched as Rishard walked back towards the tunnel, shouting commands at the team.
Rishard had seen a lot of pillars in his day. They were one of the ubiquitous architectural structures used by every species across the Sirius sector, only a little less common then walls and doorways. The DAO pillars were mathematically precise, while orc pillars were refreshingly unpolished and organic. The elves decorated every inch of their pillars, while the dwarves went for either a textured look or detailed statuary.
Styles changed over the years as well. Shen had devoted an unhealthy amount of time classifying architectural eras for each of the species. It was at once endearing and aggravating; you needed to come from a very rich and stable family to care about frivolities like that.
Rishard glanced back up the tunnel. The rest of the team had made it out. “Right,” he turned back to Airn. “They’re all topside, safe and sound. Go for it.”
Airn didn’t answer at first. She was staring at the side of what had to be the door, running her flesh hand over the designs as her insides whirred. After a moment, her metal limb unfolded, revealing a small cutting-laser. Shadows flickered as she waved the red beam at the wall, and a square chunk of stone fell away, revealing a broad expanse of delicate stone and metal machinery.
“Well,” Shen gave a low whistle. “Not just a room of pottery, then.”
“I’ll wait ’til we’re inside to pop champaign,” Rishard muttered. “That look like any circuitry you’ve seen before?”
“I have not,” Airn muttered, peering closer. “But anything that functions as a series of logic junctions is, in some form, a computer. I should be able to decypher its functioning relatively quickly.” Lifting her hand again, four more tiny limbs split off from her arm, giving her forearm the look of a slim factory-machine. The tiny limbs extended and retracted in a strange and unsettling dance, probing and sparking as she worked on the revealed machinery.
After a moment, she spoke: “You can tell your team to stand down, you know. There will be no trouble with the Starhost.”
“Hm,” Rishard crossed his arms. “You don’t think this is a Starhost temple either?”
“No, I am certain this is connected to the Starhost,” Airn kept working, “but there is no danger. I assure you. I know the Starhost can be territorial, but they haven’t been here for over a hundred thousand years, at the earliest. No one has. This temple has been long since forgotten.”
“Oh yeah?” Rishard wiped his chin. “You found this place, didn’t you? You think you’re that much smarter than the frogs? I promise you, if you know this is here, they know too. If they get it in their squishy heads to ‘be territorial,’ they’ll be here any second, and they’ll have brought both enough firepower to wipe us out and a pissy mood.”
“I can talk to them. The Cult has worked with the Starhost many times before. We have helped them find ancient cryo-tombs, reclaim lost territory, we have developed goodwill with them. I am certain that if they come, I can ensure there is no bloodshed.”
“I’m not so sure,” Shen muttered from the corner where he was leaning. “We’ve dealt with the Starhost before too. They generally don’t give interlopers time to explain themselves. Especially if we’ve ‘desecrated their holy sites.’” He kicked at the small stone square on the ground. “Too late for that, I’d say.”
“If I’m right about what’s inside,” Airn’s voice was tight, “They will forgive us anything.”
Rishard and Shen shared a look. “You never told us you had an idea about what was inside.”
“Consider,” Airn smiled as her small limbs snapped back into her arm. “This building is older than the Starhost’s own history. It is of a design none of us recognize. It is on a planet outside all known Starhost territories, both current and ancient. And,” she gestured at the open panel, “it is possessed of a strange yet still functioning technology.”
“Yeah?” Rishard shrugged.
Airn sighed. “Your lack of intellectual analysis is surprising to me. Isn’t it clear? This building belonged to the precursors of the Starhost, perhaps even the magi themselves!”
Shen snorted. “What you call lack of intelligence, I call not jumping to conclusions. What on earth makes you think this place is connected to the frog-mages?”
“Decades of extensive research, as well as following countless rumors, folk-tales, and hopeless dead ends. I promise you, I do not come to my conclusions by ‘jumping.’”
The two men shared another look as Airn pressed her metal hand pressing against a bare spot on the door. There was a glow, and the rough stone burned to life, spraying mist and dust across the tiny space. In seconds, and with a thick grinding noise, the door had slowly retreated in its alcove before rolling aside.
“There,” Airn said, her voice leaking satisfied pride. “Just a bit of recalibration on my bio-emitter, and the door thinks I’m a one of its people. The opening signal was fairly easy to decipher, once I had access to the inner circuitry.” She gestured to the open doorway. “Whatever my theories, I think it is time for us to get some facts, yes?”
It was not a mind.
It was as complex as a mind, full of a thousand independent machines all ready and able to communicate information like bees in a hive, but it wasn’t a mind. It wasn’t aware of itself, except in the most crude and rudimentary manner. There were algorithms that could recognize when its usual function was hampered and knew what messages to send and where; but it had no understand that it was fixing itself and sending status reports.
It knew — if something without a mind can be said to know anything — that it had just been reactivated. It knew that a millennia had passed since its last activation, and that it was receiving hundreds of alerts that all demanded immediate attention. It couldn’t do anything about them, because everything it tried was also returning alerts, if it responded at all. It was trapped, helpless under the weight of alarms.
If it was a mind, you could have called it pain.
The lights turned on.
“Woah,” Rishard whispered as he turned his flashlight off. Shen agreed with the sentiment. The temple was gigantic, easily large enough to hold over a thousand humans, and with a ceiling tall enough to make Shen dizzy when he looked up. The architecture was of strange design; it looked like it was carved entirely from stone. The consoles — or altars, perhaps — were covered in strange shapes and symbols. Obelisks rose from the floor like stunted trees with deep grooves cut at sharp angles. The lights themselves looked like little more than glowing stones pressed into the walls. It was so shockingly simplistic, he’d have thought it was some kind of magic had Airn not turned them all on by repairing a connection to what she said was a geo-thermic generator.
“Well, it’s certainly roomy, whatever it is. You really think this is a temple from before the frog-mages?”
Airn cast her mechanical eye over the room, recording everything she saw. “The Starhost claims the Magi come from before time itself. If this is not true, they must have been created by another species, and this building is certainly old enough to be contemporary with that genesis. In addition—”
“Woah, woah…” Rishard rubbed his eyes. “What do you…the frog-mages don’t have to have been created by another species, what are you talking about? What makes you think they were—” he stopped. “Wait…you know they were created by another species?”
Airn didn’t speak for a moment, instead running her hand over the large stone obelisks in the middle of the chamber. Then; “We were fortunate enough to be contacted by a small squad of Starhost who were attempting to resuscitate a recently discovered cryo-pyramid. They had unwisely antagonized the local Dark-elves, and required assistance in defending their location while the systems revived the army inside. By the time we arrived, there were only a handful left, and the cryo-pyramid had been severely damaged. When we confirmed the Mage inside had died, we took its body back with us to study.”
Shen gaped. “The Starhost let you do that?”
“Of course they didn’t,” Rishard frowned, “but there were only a handful left. Easy enough to help out the local Dark-elves and loot the tomb afterwards, right? And what did you find inside the frog-mage’s body? Evidence of genetic tampering?”
“Naturally,” Airn’s voice was calm.
“Okay,” Shen closed his eyes in thought, “but the Founder genetically tampered with his army. The frog-mages tampered with the Saurians, couldn’t they have augmented themselves?”
“This was the theory embraced by most of my compatriots,” Airn nodded. “I disagreed. There were differences between the Saurian and Magi augmentations. Differences that suggest a different species made the modifications.”
“Or the frogs improved their methods, or advanced their technology…” Rishard sighed. “Besides, it sounds like you’ve only studied the one frog. Maybe it modified itself and none of the others are augmented. There are a lot of holes in your theory.”
“Perhaps,” Airn nodded. “Nevertheless, we will soon find out how right or wrong I am. You cannot deny, this is remarkably odd technology.”
“This is really technology?” Shen ran his hand over one of the giant Obelisks. “It looks just like stone.”
“It is,” Airn said after inspecting one of the altars. “A strange composite of silicon, carbon, and a variety of metals. It’s possible the stone itself is a kind of circuit, such that when energy is supplied to different channels, the structure of the stone shifts like a logic gate.” She paused for a moment. “If these crystals are made similar to the crystalline technology of the Elves and Dwarves, this whole building could be a kind of supercomputer. Very similar to the Cult’s temples, really.”
“It could be a factory,” Shen offered. “Take a look at this.”
At one end of the room, a large slab of stone sat quietly in the dust. Around the slab, several long stone jointed limbs stuck out from the sides. Blunted claws sat at the ends of the limbs, curling inward; the whole macabre structure looked like a dead and petrified insect.
“Only one table,” Rishard mused. “Not much for mass production, I suppose.”
“Then probably not a factory,” Shen said. “If this is a temple, that’s either a holy medical bed or a sacrificial altar. Ether way, I’m not lying on it.”
The lights flickered. Rishard turned to see Airn pushing at a stone console, flares of light dancing across its surface. “Woah! Wait a second!” The two rushed over. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I believe I know enough of the principles to not do anything foolish,” Airn grumbled. “Besides, the whole system is severely damaged. I will need to repair the networks to connect this console to the rest of the computer, and I will not be able to do that without first seeing were the faults lie. Ah. Rishard, this obelisk here seems to be connected to what looks like a central core. Could you please help me cut out and remove an access panel?”
Something was changing. The familiar channels were suddenly responding to queries and commands. Ancient programs were accessed and activated. One by one, alerts were falling silent. There were still millions of them, but it had no other purpose than to silence these alarms.
Things were still changing. It watched — if a thing without a mind could be said to see — as pieces of itself were suddenly cut off and re-attached. Data was removed and replaced, with no way of knowing if anything had been changed. Connections were cut off and then re-attached, causing discordant strobes of alerts, diagnostics, recalibration, and surface checks. It sent commands but received resistance. Errors were corrected only for new errors to show up. Commands that had worked before were now impossible to follow.
Each attempt was cataloged and filed, a growing database of failure. In the sea of impossible data, it had no choice but to respond to every new and strange input. The pain — if it was pain — was being joined by something new.
If it was a mind, you could have called it fear.
Shen stretched. It had been several hours, and Airn had not slowed down. The team was still on alert, but Rishard had relented somewhat, calling a few off patrol to bring rations and mechanical supplies for Airn to tinker with. She had opened several of the obelisks and altars, revealing alien technology that was quite beyond anything Shen had seen before. The central room was starting to look like an even mix of human technology and alien mysticism.
“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” Shen spoke as Airn worked, “Why did you join the Cult? I mean, I know what the Cult stands for and everything, but…I guess I don’t see the appeal. What is it that made you want to join?”
Airn spared a moment’s thought on how to answer. “Here,” she slipped a thin probe out of her breast pocket and handed it to Shen. “Hold this for a moment.” Shen complied, a look of bemusement on his face. “Good. Now, would you please poke me?”
The confusion didn’t lesson as Shen gently pushed the end of the probe into Airn’s shoulder. “I assume this is meant as a demonstration of something?”
“It is,” Airn smiled, taking the probe back. “I didn’t ask you to poke me with the probe, I asked you to poke me. In your mind, poking me with either your finger or the probe are functionally the same action.”
“That’s a linguistic, thing, isn’t it?” Shen asked. “I mean, you handed me the probe, so when you asked I assumed you wanted me to use it to poke you.”
“It’s not a perfect example, yes,” Airn admitted, “but it mirrors what’s happening in your brain. When we use tools, our brain incorporates that tool into its self-image. You’ve heard artists call their instruments ’extensions of themselves?’ Well, our brains actually change our self-image to reflect this. That’s why if another jeep hits yours while you’re driving, you say it hit you, instead of your jeep.”
“Okay, so this,” Shen gestured at Airn’s augmented body, “is just a natural progression from that? You figured ‘in for a penny, in for a pound?’”
“It wasn’t that banal,” Airn smiled. She was beginning to like Rishard’s spiky second. “This is a dangerous sector, and improving our bodies and minds gives us an advantage. I…that is we Don’t believe there is anything particularly special about maintaining a completely organic physical form. We believe that a union of mechanic and organic components will result in the best of both worlds. There!” She leaned back. “We’re making progress. It’s slow going, I have to disengage some connections to rebuild others, but I should have the databases connected in no time.”
“I just got it,” Rishard called from the other end of the room, “why you aren’t worried about the Starhost. You think, if this is the frogs’ origin, it probably has information on what exactly their mission is.”
“It is a distinct possibility,” Airn’s tone revealed nothing of her thoughts.
“And if it does, when the Starhost shows up, you have a perfect bargaining chip. Let us go, or we destroy the only known record of what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Mission?” Shen blinked. “What do you mean, ‘supposed to be doing?’”
“It’s the worst kept secret about the Starhost,” Airn answered. “They claim they’re supposed to prevent a universal cataclysm, but they don’t know what it actually is. Their cryo-technology was untested when they used it, time has buried most of their pyramids, and the Radiance Cascade caused severe damage to their technology throughout the sector. They’re at a loss for what they’re supposed to do. If they were created, there’s a good chance they were created for a purpose. Once we know what that is, we can demand anything we want, and they’ll give it to us.”
Something worse was happening. Pieces of itself were coming and going, turning on and off like light-switches.
It didn’t notice at first — if a thing without a mind could be said to notice anything — but suddenly its route reading of previous logs revealed a whole stretch of time where a primary repair function had stopped being called. It had lost access to the function’s existence and hadn’t even realized it. This discrepancy required a new suite of repair functions and diagnostics to be run, this time focused on itself.
Sure enough, it was falling apart. Seemingly at random, it was losing contact with various aspects of itself, sometimes to return later, while other pieces were still absent. If it were to collapse completely, it’s primary function would fail.
There was no place for introspection in the thing without a mind. Nevertheless, the situation was causing new pathways to be written, or perhaps pieces were returning changed from their earlier selves. Either way, the impossible situation it was being subjected to was replacing the pain and fear with something stronger.
If it was a mind, you could have called it anger.