The Price of Immortality (FT, Open)

[Solar Communes]

"And the Lord God said, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, we must send him forth." Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."

The Christian Bible, Hall of Ancient History.

Two steel doors opened. Amidst the clean, grey walls and tile floors, a few cages with lab rats existed, while several robots wandered around. Stepping through the small laboratory, the man, dressing a stylish labcoat, carried a dizzying short lady over his shoulders, who was very obviously doped. When he finally arrived next to a chair close to a surgical table, he carefully placed the lady over her own feet, and accomodated her over the chair, for she was obviously in no condition to stand. Then, the lights turned on.

"Hello, I am Doctor Julius Lovecraft, nice to meet you miss Aune," he shook her hand, which seemed totally relaxed, "I apologize for this surprise which might be very scary," the scientist said, smiling and waving the hair of the woman, "but I decided to choose you for witnessing the result of my five hundred years old research."

The woman just groaned, still barely understanding what he said. He then observed a laboratory robot picking up a rat from the cage and placing it over the table. Carefully, the man grabbed a small vial from his pocket, which seemed completely empty at first glance. He then grabbed a tiny gauss pistol, and explained the logic behind the experiment he took her to watch against her own will.

"Yes, of course the fact I outlived my research says enough, Aune, but there is a difference between having an indefinite lifespan and being truly immortal. Yes, I have an indefinite lifespan, but that does not mean I am going to live forever. I took precautions of course, and avoid taking unecessary risks, but in the end, statistically I ought to die some day, and then, there is the claim that quantum immortality exists, and even scientific evidences to that, but I would rather take my chances here. Schroedinger's cat and my rat may be gone for good right now." he spoke in a disturbing, maddening way, with his suggestions and behavior hinting at a mind which was obviously not completely in touch with sanity.

"What are you doing? Let me out of here!" the lady finally got to her senses as she desperatedly began to ran towards the door.

"Wait a minute, Aune!" the doors suddenly shut down, as she began beating on them desperatedly, to no avail. Then she grabbed a gun hidden in her wallet and began to fire against the madman. The bullets seemed to pass straight to him.

"Do you think I would have lived for six hundred years if I wasn't cautious?" he asked, laughing softly, "Interactive holograms are wonderful inventions, don't you think? Now, I didn't want to scare you that much, just stay calm, Aune, if I was a serial killer you would already be dead. I just want for someone to see it with their own eyes, and nothing more. I will let you leave after you watch my discovery, I promise."

Sighing, Aune then shouted, seemingly perceiving the obvious:

"If you wanted someone just to watch your insanity, you would have picked another human! You took me because you know almost nobody of importance would care about another minor increase in the percentage of humans among the population."

The doctor then laughed, "You are bringing your own prejudices!" he sighed, "not every man is a bigot preaching the extermination and subjugation of your kin, Aune Delacroix. In fact, I have gathered enough knowledge about your race to know how absurd such preaching is, specially considering how ten percent of your genetic code can be directly traced to the original human genome, Frenchwoman."

"What the hell?" Aune, completely taken by surprise with his claim, asked.

"There are cultural evidences as well. I mean, your native language, it is a mix of whatever elves speak with French. I find it peculiarly intriguing, and always wondered why. And besides, your music, your traditions, everything about your people shouts "I am French"! Just search for France in human history and you'll see it. I believe we are not the first humans to set foot on this planet."

"Preposterous! You are a lunatic raving mad theories and ideas, I won't give a grain of salt to anything you claim!" Aune shouted, clearly angered when he implied her entire people were essentially no different from humans in behaviors and culture.

"I suppose actions speak louder than words. Then, see this vial? Could you put your weapon down please?" the scientist asked, as he shook his head, "No! Don't do it! Shooting this vial would be quite stupid unless you are willing to volunteer as a test subject for this experiment."

Sighing, she lowered her pistol, and watched, "Show me!"

Carefully, he fired thirty shots against the rat, as its blood flowed, and its body became completely immobile, dead. Julius then uncorked the vial, and began to drop whatever was inside it over the deceased rodent.

"The disadvantage of macrocellular life forms is the interdependence of their bodies, and their lack of decentralized organs which would otherwise provide them with a much greater survivability. If we could transfer vital functions, and perhaps even consciousness to a decentralized set of nanites, we would be able to create something closer to true immortality, but still far from it, because even nanites can be destroyed, but when even one surviving nanite could preserve the self in adequate grounds for its multiplication, a great step to true immortality was taken."

"I see, but your rat is still dead. And couldn't this cause a grey goo?"

"Be patient Aune. Nanites don't multiply as fast in reality as they do in the vids. And grey goo?" a very loud laughter echoed, "come on elf, we have been born with nanites for centuries, if that happened then the 'racist xenocidal bastards' as you think all of us are would be gone. But don't have any ideas from that, lady. Nobody takes lightly those who try to exterminate their race."

"I see, doctor Lovecraft, and ironic as many of you seek to wipe out my people from our world."

"Now, the proccess begins by transforming the digestive tracts into an holographic and decentralized system, but it has a peculiar disadvantge I have yet to fix."

"Which is?"

"You'll see it soon."

A few minuts later, the rat began to have its wounds regenerated, but seemingly, its heart did not beat.

"Nanites can be very discrete. Although the body will obviously generate heat, vital functions are so decentralized that they are impercetible without specialized tools. It makes sense actually: have you ever heard the breathing of a bacteria? I don't think so. And the best of all, no stink."

"And what about the problem you mentioned?"

"Well," the doctor pondered, "my rat no longer has a stomach because most of his former organs, now devoid of function and used to feed the nanites, have atrophied. Of course this means transporting the nutrients to the nanites would be a bit tricky, until I find an idea on how to make any subject infused with the new life able to feed normally. It is essentially a mold for the nanites which now are its self. Something like the relation between a body and a spirit, but more scientific than spiritual. Part of the problem has been solved through solar power, but the capabilities to store photovoltaic energy from the sun are a bit limited."

"I see, now how does it feed from whatever solar power can't provide if it can't swallow food and digest it?" Aune asked, as she felt a shiver on her spine, a feeling that the answer would not be pleasant.

"You see, beautiful Aune," the doctor said, "the way the transformation happens would find several barriers amidst the idiocy of what humanity brought to this world: the Net Memes and cheap scaremongering mythology. It would in fact ruin everything, and condemn people to die and await an unknown and scientifically impredictable fate beyond this life. Obviously," he smiled, "I wouldn't take such state closer to immortality than before to myself, because I want to improve the lives of all my comrades. Many won't like it, at first, before they realize I truly did this to help them," he then stopped as he looked at her, and grabbed her chin:

"Afraid? Little Aune? I am not going to kill you. I want to stop people from dying, not the opposite. Just... no, you should not try to kill my pet rate. I love him. I made him immune to pain and suffering out of love, my dear. Don't kill him!" Aune raised her gauss pistol towards the rat, shoving the hologram. She pulled the trigger, the shot firing towards the rat direction, when suddenly a sharp pain came to her, as all went into blackness.

"Like I promised, lady Aune," the hologram smiled, "I would take you back home as soon as this experiment ended. You will be the harbinger for my new immortality, dear," he whispered in her ear, "and then, eventually nobody will notice it as they become closer to immortal. I just hope the problem with the increased energy demands of the new immortal can be fixed, but I will find a way." he began to caress the rat, as it finally released his grip over her jugular.

"Bah, what a bullshit!" he scowled at the rat, "I hope the scaremongers won't be comparing my design flaws with the old legends. After all, my dear, you will be able to get into the sun as fine as you did before, and you will continue looking perfectly normal and are still alive, only as a sum of independent living nanites rather than as a messy, weak mass of cells. And rest be assured," he laughed, "I'd kill you with fire if you sparkled, but you won't, because I know what I am doing and no emo goth teensy bull of eons ago will change that." and then, after laughing like a maniac, the mad doctor watched as a robot dragged her away from his secret laboratory.

"And ratmeat! How are you feeling today?" he asked, attempting to speak with his rat, "I need you to spread the next stage of our people's evolution for the coming days, so I hope you are ready? Do you want a cheese? Oh sorry," he laughed, "I forgot you can't eat cheese anymore. In before whatever retarded meme comes from my experiments once they surface!" he laughed again, as his hologram finally disappeared, and a previously hidden ventilation grate suddenly popped, as ratmeat began to climb it with the grace of a super-rat.

The madness, the price of immortality, was coming.

[New Zepuha]

ooc:So what is this supposed to be?

[Solar Communes]

An alarm clock played constantly, in an unnerving way. Slowly opening her eyes, Aune made the clock shut down with a simple thought. According to the time, it was seventeen hours, a quite late noon. She slept the whole day over.

"What happened? My backups! They are all gone! Who did this?" she spoke out loudly when realizing that her entire memory of what happened yesterday has been erased. It wasn't normal. The only way for any people in the Confederation to lose memory was for someone to intentionally meddle in their brain and wipe it out. The prospect was particularly scary, although until now, it was only part of spooky detective stories, never having been tried. To know that someone had no problems to erase, and perhaps insert memories into any augmented brain was a truly frightening perspective.

There was else a biting sensation of hunger bothering the young lady, and thus, she rapidly walked towards the center of her bedroom and extended her arms, as nanites cleaned all the dirt and grime from her body, and the first clothes she thought about slowly began to dress themselves around her body. Then a weapon began to fly from the closet, landing on her hand, as she holstered it. Always a good idea to carry one around in a world where many humans saw her kind as inferior and worthless.

Going to the kitchen, Aune sat down on a bar stool as a serving robot brought her french fries. She ate the fries with no regards to etiquette, quickly swallowing most of them without masticating properly. However, there was still an emptiness, and the food seemed to not satiate her in any manner. Thus, soon the robot came with more cryogenically frozen dishes being brought. The elf ate more than an obese man who just had his way with marijuana, and yet, she still felt hungry like if she didn't eat at all.

Then she began to feel a very, very bad sensation that everything she ate wasn't truly going down. Belching, she felt everything going back and ran to the nearest bathroom of her house. Aune then began to vomit throughly everything she ate before. The flush automatically cleaned the toilet, as she sighed. Something was definitively wrong with her, and having the memory of one entire day wiped was just the tip of the iceberg. Suddenly, she began to think about one of her friends, a human doctor named Edward.

"Hello! Edward, am I bothering you? I need your help with something, something happened with me that is not like any disease I know" she thought, communicating with him directly through her mind.

"Of coruse you are not bothering me Delacroix, now, what is the situation? Tell me the symptoms and I will see what I can do."

"Edward! I am feeling constant hunger, and no matter how much I eat it doesn't stop, but instead I throw up everything I swallow, and my entire memory of what happened yesterday is gone!"

"That is impossible Aune! There is no way a disease could do this! Someone did this to you! Stay at home Aune! Whoever did this could still be watching you! I will come to you as soon as I can. Goodbye."

He stopped responding then, as Aune, feeling terribly weakened, simply returned to her bedroom upstairs and laid down on her matress. There was a terrible anxiety, a terrible hunger she knew not how to stop. Opening the curtains with another thought in the hope some sunlight could help, the lady continue to agonize, but as the sunlight began to touch directly her skin, she felt a minor alleviation, and the sensation fo hunger seemed not as terrible as before.

"Who did this to me?" the thought continued to torment her self, for she knew it didn't happen naturally. The waiting for the doctor was agonizing, and knowing the sun would soon set, making her hunger become even more accentuated, didn't help. She felt terribly helpless, completely unable to solve the problem by herself. It was terrible, and perhaps, burning her from inside to know she depended completely from a human to not die from the illness she suffered.

The night finally began, and her agony only worsened. The hunger began to gave her the feeling it was eating her from inside, it began to feel extremely painful. Writhing, Aune still had the thought he was coming to help her holding things together. The time passed on, and without the light of the sun, which strangely seeemed to have provided her with some sustenance, the terrible sensation began to numb her consciousness.

"Aune, I am coming to help you!" his voice finally came from the other side, for finally his friend arrived, but it was already too late. When the door opened, there was an overwhelming feeling for her to suppress, until she lost complete control and like a maniac, jumped against Edward, taking him by surprise. Grabbing him by the collar, she pressed his neck as she could feel something slowly coming out of him to inside her through her fingers, and her hunger slowly passing, but she couldn't control the desire. Split into tiny particles to get through the pores of the skin, his blood slowly was absorbed by her, until he became completely pale, and died at her hands.

Aune then finally returned to her senses, and soon became aware of her actions, when in shock, she finally released him from her grip, and shouted:

"Oh no! What have I done Edward! I killed you!"

Horrified, she fell down in tears, realizing finally what happened to her as the tips of her fingers were visibly soaked in blood. The time became less perceivable, for despair became eternal, until eventually, her grief was interrupted as a voice called her.

"Aune Delacroix. Come with me. I can give you answers about your predicament."

Immediately, the elf turned back and aimed her pistol at whoever was behind her. It was a man dressed completely in black, wearing sunglasses through which a green light could be seen coming out of his eyes. His anachronistic dress was particularly interesting.

"What are you doing here?"

"It has come to the attention of the Many that there is a madman from the Pastafari conducting unethical experiments against innocents." he enigmatically answered.

"The Many? Pastafari? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Come with me and you shall get your answers."

"And Edward?"

"We can purge him from whatever impurity you placed in his body and bring him back, but first you have to come with us."

"Who or What are you? How do you know my name?"

"I am one among the Many. We are anonymous, yet we have names, we are legion, yet we are ourselves." his way of speaking was spooky but at the same time, had a slight hint of him not taking seriously what he was claiming.

"Hivemind?" she asked, as disturbingly, the man matched her exactly with the same word, in perfect synchrony.

"No. It is more than that, it is a too long story about people getting crazy from being too much of bookworms for centuries of their existence and starting doing batshit insane experiments which results have affected us for two thousand years. I know it may look like a live trolling or black humor attempt to post in the Nets for Anon to laugh at you for believing in it but it is not and... come with me if you want to understand."

While they spoke, Aune, still totally confused about the matter, followed him, while the man carried Edward's corpse, and led her to his car, parked next to her garage. A Hover SUV painted in black, with a huge label with the name "Partyvan". Getting into the passenger's seat, she noticed as he began to driver the vehicle with his thoughts.

"Where are we going? And I can't believe you painted Partyvan on its sides? How can I believe this is not some sort of wicked Internet Meme?"

"Trust me, the Partyvan, the Lulz, it is all part of a big game."

"What big game?"

"A game of survival as... sentient nanites who would be considered a threat to the survival of mankind and be wiped out like all the aliens the Solarians did, we are arriving soon, Aune, and you shall understand."

"What the hell are you talking about? I am still an elf!"

"Hahaha!" the MiB laughed, while continuing to drive the van through the suspended highways of Noveau Paris, connecting its many arcologies, "your biological self is a corpse Aune! Ever heard about that bullshit of uploading minds to computers? This is something like that, but instead your self was uploaded to nanites that use your now dead corpse as a mere cover."

"This is the most fucked up shit I ever heard."

"You didn't listen to the best yet. I supposed that once you discover are a natural shapeshifter now, you'll understand!"

"What? you are kidding me?"

"Aune," he then spoke like those New Age hippies selling trinkents, "you have transcended mortal flesh, which is nothing but a shell to your true self. You didn't die, but instead you are now a sentient, self-replicating colony of nanites with a dumb and dead corpse granting it a more solid and perceivable form, rather than a sentient organic being with dumb nanites granting it immortality. I know this is fucked up, I was like you when that son of a bitch got me, but worry not. You'll soon see that it's not as bad as it seems, and the," he coughed, "design issues can be fixed, even the intetional ones."

"Intentional flaws?" her mind found difficult to accompany the things the man explained while their ride progressed.

"Trust me, you don't want to know what a goth freak reading too much fiction about undead with a Ph.D. in Nanotechnology can do after living for hundred years in boredom."

"No shit?"

"No shit Aune. Yes, some of the first ones in old Solar Communes universe to get clinical immortality didn't adapt well to it, as you probably already know, from the motherfucker who wiped your memory of yesterday. And then, they began to build delusional worlds from whatever massively multiplayer games, books, movies, and fanfic they read and got the genius idea! What a genius, think about it!" he then changed his tone to a sarcastic one, trying to imitate a n00b posting in an Internet forum, "Hey! Those vamps are cool, maybe if I do this with those nanites I could invent vamps in real life! It would be awsum dood!" he sighed, "yes, believe me or not, that's how this mess you just got into started."

"I can't believe it! Then why didn't I hear about it before?"

"Because you know the deal: if you die, either it's over for sure and you meet oblivion or you may have a new existence in a parallel universe where you war a pleasure slave for a three hundred pounds Global State bureaucrat. I'd rather not take risks," he said, "and well, the idea of burning doesn't appeal to me, because if the Solarians knew about our existence, they would wipe us out to the last... that is, before we fix our design flaws, of course. After they are fixed, then we may let them know as they'll not see us a threats."

"I see. How many fucked up 'experiments' are around?" Aune asked.

"Nobody knows for sure. Every fucking fan fiction, roleplaying game, tabletop game, computer game and horror movie of the last three thousand years may have been used by a lunatic with more lifespan than his sanity could chew as inspiration. I don't really want to think much about this, now Aune, just one more turn to the left and we will arrive."

And thus, everything began.


(OOC:

ooc:So what is this supposed to be?

A Future Tech RP inspired by Twilight Fail, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer 40k and World of Darkness I'm doing for the LULZ. The plague of the nanotechnological and/or sparkling vampires will spread through the galaxy while a covert or open war might happen inside Solar Communes between the two types of "immortals" inside it as this thread progresses.)

[Solar Communes]

When the Black SUV finally stopped in a parking lot annex close to one of the upper floors of one of the several buildings of Eden, the driver left and gestured for her to follow. Amelie immediately got out of the vehicle, and began to follow him to the building's entrance door at such tall floor, passing through the transparent skyway through which the growing city could be seen. Most buildings were translucent or transparent in many outer sections to allow for sunlight to reach down, and several ventilation shafts existed to help with air circulation, reducing the heat of the city center. The door opened by itself while the man in black approached it, as he alerted:

"Quickly! Get inside!"

She took haste but didn't run, reaching inside the foyer, one of many connecting to the multiple levels of streets in the city. It was a plain place, a bare room with no decoration and three steel double doors, like those of elevators. The left door opened by itself, making Amelie wonder who was controlling the doors. Following the man through, she ended in a corridor that connected through several apartment rooms with traditional wooden doors in a layout that resembled that of an hotel, and quickly, she began to consult the Nets to check where she was.

"Redsky Hotel, defintively not the place to hide something big into." she thought, for it made no sense. Then he finally pointed to one of the apartment doors:

"I'll let you open it."

She opened the door: it was, apparently, just a plain Hotel Room, a double bed, several closets and drawers featured by a curvaceous, spiraling metallic design and most entertainment provide by a direct brain-computer interface. There was another matter then, as she finally remembered of another problem:

"Edward? Why didn't you bring him?"

"Amelie, he is in good hands now, trust me." He answered, as he approached one of the closets, and touched it. The closet splitted in two pieces which slid to opposite sides, revealing a bare concrete wall, which soon began to slide as an elevator appeared behind it. He then motioned for her to follow. With both inside, the elevator began to rapidly descent into the unknown. Wisely, Amelie began to feel the altitude through the still intact interfaces of machine and consciousness, seeing how time passed, and coming to a realization.

"I know the blueprints. There is no sublevel past the sixth. Where are we going?"

"Officially, you mean," he laughed, tapping the wall of the elevator, "we are going to the fortieth level below ground, we call it The Forum."

"Meeting area?" she wondered.

"You will see." he remained silent during the rest of the descent, leaving Delacroix to wonder about what he had to show and tell her. There was too much that changed, too much that surfaced. It was neither a blessing nor a curse, for both were works of mysticism. It was a work of science, perhaps dark and perverted science, but something that could be surpassed, changed through knowledge of its construction, rather than something set on stone, and yet, there was a strange feeling the elf began to have. It was a sensation that somehow, there was something else, something whispering, cajouling, cackling into near silence, creeping into the shadows, stalking her since she woke up. Trying to dismiss it as a reaction to the high stress she suffered worked, but it didn't seem to be fading.

"You aren't telling me everything. This can't be just a work of science, I can sense something else behind this." Amelie pondered, considering how unlikely the explanation was. Perhaps there was some foul play involved, something far more dangerous than these transformations would be to those who remained as Solarians. Or perhaps it was nothing but the works of perverted minds being filled with madness to end the emptiness of boredom that eternal life eventually devolved into among the first generation of clinically immortal humans, still unused with the experience of not dying of age.

However, her thoughts stopped as the door finally opened. It was... massive. Built like a new envisionment for an ancient Forum, with towering pillars of spiraled steel that seemed to imitate the pattern of ancient snake symbol of medicine, with faint light coming towards its center from a skylight hundreds of meters atop. Chairs seemed built for giants rather than normal people and a large holographic Globe of Eden hovering at the center of the massive oval chamber.

"Unbelievable!" she opened her mouth, amazed with such colossal chamber, observing all the details, including the humongous fresco that covered all around the walls. They were of peculiar interest. The first sequence of paintings, the closest to the floor, showed a human life cycle from birth to death, like it were originally. The second demonstrated the current Solarian, with a transitionary sequence of copies of the previous human life cycle that had greater spacings between them, with the last ones before immortality showing the cycle directly form adulthood to death, with no old age. However, in the same sequence demonstrating the life cycle of a Solarian, there was, after the painting covering all around the wall, a final image of three men dying: one through suicide, one through a hovercar crashing against his body and the last through an human hand pulling a trigger. Finally, the sequence located most to the top of the wall had a recurring symbol of infinity and the drawing of humans and elves being becoming several and changing their shapes, and also becoming machine and Many, the very air around him, until the infinity symbol in the painted canted upwards and the sequence of paintings ending, symbolizing that what was next was perhaps unknown by those who drew such fresco.

"So," after looking around the painting, she asked, "do you believe that whoever did this created a new step in your artificial evolution."

"I have my own interpretation about what message the artist intended to pass," the man in black answered, as he touched her shoulder, "and I apologize for the lack of a more crowded reception. Maybe I should not have informed them I was going to schedule a meeting. Anarchists and schedules don't work well together," he laughed, the shape of the room amplifying and echoing his voice naturally.

"So, does this mean I am here for nothing?" she sighed, apparently frustrated about how he just escorted her there to supposedly meet others in the same "condition", but it was as empty as a vanguard opera house, as if any existed in the Confederation.

"Of course not!" he smiled at her, as he pointed at the massive place, "I brought you here because we are inside a giant Faraday Cage and covered by enough rocks to make any electronic espionage attempt impossible, unless," he laughed, "magic was involved".

"Paranoia? I see. Now that we are safe, why build chairs so big? What is supposed to take a seat here?" she wondered, for those chairs were large enough for something as big as a Bloodthirster to take a seat. Of course, she didn't believe they were made for them.

"To scare the shit out of anyone who stumbles here by accident enough for this one to never tell anyone about this place," he grinned, "coupled with a set of currently disabled special 'effects', of course."

"I see," she looked at the massive chamber, "now, about this deal, care to explain me everything?"

"Very well, to put things simply," he explained, "some experiments have brought a particularly different side effect: the fact the Nets tampered with the identity of the victims as the way the first nanites 'uploaded' the self-awareness was far from perfect, so, as you will see," the man pointed to the holographic projector showing the globe of Eden, as suddenly the image changed to that of a peculiar woman, with one of her eyes red and the other green, dressed like a more than three thousand years old Internet Meme, "what would you expect to happen if someone's personality and sense of identity was merged with random Internet content from the last three thousand years of mankind history? And be thankful I turned the audio off."

"Madness?" Amelie asked bluntly, without much words.

"Indeed, but not normal madness, Internet Madness!" he pointed at the image, "some of the earlier victims lost large parts of their former identity, which were replaced by a dynamic but personality of the Internet their very consciousnesses are connected to. And like you may know, the Internet is ridden with the most vile, sadistic and disturbing content beyond what your imagination can suggest." he then added, "but when you have no shape or face you can call your own, perhaps a stable personality may be a bit of a difficult matter."

"So are these people completely unreliable?"

"Amelie, even in the Internet there are salvageable elements. Some of them have inherited from scientific intranets and recovered decades of research that have been fallen into oblivion, others have absorbed the humanitarian websites of eons ago as part of their new persona. It's just that most of the Internet from where these types have part of their personality formed isn't very humane, useful or reliable, but some of them are trustworthy," he then sighed, "the dangerous ones are those which inherit parts of useful scientific knowledge with the degenerate matter of the Net during their transformation, but fortunately they are a minority, because soon new strains of the nanovirus became more effective at the transfer."

"I see, and you, what are you," she asked, "you mentioned something about the Many."

"My case is another example of a flaw in the transfer of the self from the flesh to the nanites," he waved at the hologram as a crowd of other men dressed in black suits appeared there, and began to speak in a haunting chorus, "we lost a part of ourselves during the transfer, replaced by the Anonymous inside every one of us. We are the Many, we think both as one as as everyone. We know all our thoughts and yet can forget them to remember what each of us think," the chorus enigmatically explained, "we seek to ensue that nobody will ever scream: Kill it with fire!" the way they screamed was a deafening interpretation of what they meant, as laughters echoed, "there are better ways to kill us than fire, but we challenge you to discover, if you dare."

"Excuse me? But I already got it. Now, how do you ensure nobody will scream with a flamer in hands?"

"We open up an obscure, cheap movie from the twentieth century to answer your question," the chorus announced, making the hologram change to that of a scene of a man in black with a strange device in his hand emitting a flash, as another person in the holographic movie behaves as if he didn't remember the presence of the suspicious men a few minutes later.

"Mind Control?" as the demonstration ended, Amelie became reddened of fury, for what they did was way beyond what ever the least moral person in the Confederation would do, "you are enslaving people! You are messing with their heads! It's just a matter of time!" she grabbed her own hairs, "I can't let you! I can't let you, you become like that Global State! I will stop you! Do you hear me? I won't let you get away with such a crime against freedom!"

The man next to her began to laugh so intensely that he began to roll over the floor laughing, and would most likely wet and crap in his pants from laughing if he still had such needs. Then looking at him with an unamused scowl, Amelie spotted as the hologram changed to that of a phrase.

"I c wut u did thar"

"Shit! I can't believe. I was completely twisted from inside and I can't even remember who did it, I killed my own doctor, and now the first thing you do to me is live action trolling? Who the hell are you to go like this, you son of a bitch?" Amelie became terribly angry about their prank, and then, she finally began to put two facts together, as she finally glared suspiciously at the man and spoke before he could say anything:

"You told me this chamber was a huge Faraday Cage totally isolated from the rest of the world, so do you mind to explain me how you are communicating with the rest of your goons?"

"Amelie!" he laughed, "you got it girl! I thought I was going to make a fool of you!" he explained, apparently glad she realized it, "There are no Many, it was all bullshit I created to test your wits," he then looked straight at her eyes, trying to demonstrate honesty, "but the fucked up half-person half-Internet personalities are as real as the fuckup who did this to you. They are the problem. Like the Internet, they draw too much attention to the 'Ha Kill it with fire!' types that would call an Exterminatus against us, and there is the entropy," she nodded, already understanding what he meant, "as you know, we require a far greater amount of energy to survive than humans, or elves for the matter, because we are made of several free-flowing particles that can bend our shape to our will rather than from a solid body, and thus they decay faster than human bodies and require more energy to keep up. And... I checked your doctor through a type of exam you couldn't spot through the naked eye," he finally changed his humorous manners.

"What's wrong? He is dead for good, ain't he?"

"No! Your virus, you see," he explained with a gloomy face, "most viruses were built to follow the will of the bearer regarding whether to transmit them to another or not, but yours, it will spread to whatever living being you drain from, including vegetables, if you can feed from them," his demeanor became increasingly suspicious to her, as she began to suspect his next move could be the end.

"Damn it! Why did I trust him? What a fool I am". she mentally placed the palm of her hand into her face, realizing what he was about to say, while listening to him in a silent alertness he most likely perceived.

"If your virus spread, Amelie," he sighed, "if it spreads, eventually it might consume the life of this entire world due to the fact this world would never support billions of people like us," he looked at her with a sad face, "you place me at a difficult situation, Amelie, for I know you are innocent, but, our peoples could become extinct if I let you live!"

"Think! Think!" she began to concentrate on finding a solution out of the situation, focusing heavily her thoughts while the man seemed still hesitant to deal a killing blow against her. Time was short for her to find a way to defeat or convince him to do otherwise.

"It hurts! My head! Ohhh." Amelie suddenly fell over the ground, with both hands over her face, as a terrbile headache struck into her. Then, a near blinding flash of light struck at the chamber, as the man tried to recover his sight, until he apalled. A massive projection of a laboratory appeared out of seemingly nowhere, but centered at her location. Amelie then raised her hand as a phantom pistol appeared, firing a shot against a rat, but missing, for the rat lunged against her neck and began to feed from her blood. Then the vision became far more blurry, and suddenly impossible to distinguish most things from it, including the scientist behind everything, who finally turned his face to the right angle to be spotted. Then, the vision seemed to improve slightly, as the scientist placed the rat into a ventilation shaft of such lab.

The man stood in silence as the vision ended, while Amelie slowly regained her senses, and noticing him, she began to crawl away, until he shouted:

"I swear I am not going to kill you! I know what happened to you! You was supposed to be the bait!"

"What? Bait? What are you talking about?" Amelie wondered.

"I don't know how you did it, but you projected a vision about how you 'changed'! Now everything makes sense: the first vector of your strain was a mere rat, he is the true tool whoever invented this created to spread it, he only infected you to use you as a bait, so," he sighed, "I'd kill you and my people would think the threat of your virus was over."

"Son of a bitch! Did you see his face?"

"I am sorry, but your vision was a bit too blurry. But I saw something: there was an identification card RR Cyberware in one of the tables! Do you know what that mean?"

"Wait one moment! RR Cyberware? Never heard about it?"

"Of course you wouldn't, Amelie. You know that the Solarian universe is elsewhere, but we were completely blocked from accessing that universe since the Great Isolation, and since then lost completely contact with it, and RR Cyberware never came out of the universe we lost." he seemed particularly distraught about such fact as he mentioned it.

"But then, if it was a genuine ID Card... does this mean I was brought into another universe? I can't believe in this."

"I don't know, maybe it wasn't RR Cyberware, I just caught a glimpse of it, but we should consider every possibility."

Then suddenly, a loud crash was heard, as a couple of seconds later, splinters of glass fell over the floor, and from the distant skylight, black spots with trails of jetpack smoke could be noticed as the man immediately looked up.

"Impossible! We are under attack!" he yanked a GAR-50 from his shoulder and pulled its safety off, " Amelie! Stay below that chair, there is a trap door beneath it! Run! You cannot let what you know die!"

"But I can't let you alone!" she insisted.

"Amelie, look! Do you have a rifle? No? Then you are only going to distract me! Now go!"

Amelie felt bad about abandoning the man, despite how he wanted to kill her before, she quickly crouched under the gigantic chair he indicated, and scanned for the trapdoor, but it was impossible to be found, until she finally opened the "door", if a hole with the same size of a sinkhole could be called a trapdoor.

"How do you expect me to get through this?" she shouted while he seemed to be sniping. sounds of bullets ricocheting with the floor could already be heard.

"Forget your body, let it go numb! Think you are not an elf! Ignore your trappings! Just go for it! And once you leave, think on any human man you saw: whoever is attacking us must know about you!" the man shouted before automatic fire began to be heard from where once his voice echoed.

Amelie began to concentrate. What he asked for her to do seemed complicated. She began to try numbing and relaxing her body, closing her eyes until she no longer felt her legs, her arms. Her breathing stopped, and suddenly the sounds, the touch, everything began to vanish, until her sight changed to that of how a worm would see the world if its eyes were as developed as the eyes of more advanced beings, and a sensation of weightlessnes overcame her, or perhaps it. It began to descend through the piping that such emergency exit was, seeing the heavily augmented metallic surfaces of the pipe through which she floated, turning, bending and flowing through it like dust. Time was difficult to measure during this moment, but it still retained complete awareness and memories of all that happened. It was unlike anything ever sensed by it. Perhaps something close to spiritual existence for those who believed in it.

"Will he survive?" the thought pondering over its mind as Amelie continued to travel airborne through the looping ducts. It felt a regret, and wondered about how a man who wanted to kill it now sought to protect it. Its mind still was however, partially biased to the previous shape, and she still saw herself as an Eldar lady, regardless of the truth about how she was no longer Eldar, just as the man she met was no longer human. Eventually, she saw the augmented sight of an intersection of metal bars, like those of a bathroom sink. At least, a way out. When it saw the massive sight of the hotel bathroom, it began to try remembering a man it once knew in its former life.

Then, the dust began to condensate into an humanoid form, molding into muscles and flesh slowly the organic dust it once carried. Although time was difficult to measure, likely many hours have passed when it finally assumed a new shape. A blonde, strong man with slightly tanned skin and brown eyes, and a short liss hair, suddenly appeared, naked in such bathroom. Amelie felt very weird, it was the most strange feeling it ever had. Taking a towel, it wrapped it around himself, and hoped to find some clothes in the hotel room, and that nobody was there.

Slowly opening the bathroom's door, he watched the darkened room.

"Nobody here", he began to walk through the room, towards one of the closets, in the hopes of finding anything to wear. As he opened it, he sighed of relief: there was something: not much, just socks, underwear, a red shirt, a black jacket, jeans pants and some stylish riot boots, very retro in Eden but enough for his needs.

"A name. I cannot call myself Amelie anymore" the bizarre thought came into him as he got dressed. It was clear now that such new life would be very, very difficult and at the same time strange.

"Charles", he thought, [/i]"Charles Depardieu. It will have to do."[/i]

And thus, Charles carefully left the room, hoping to not encounter the hunters. He moved through the corridors hoping to encounter an exit in whichever floor he was. He'd rather not risk consulting the Net to draw the attention of possible SIGINT to his current location. Taking a few turns, he finally saw the exit door to another vertical street. Opening it, he left the building, unaware of the fate of the man who brought him there, and of where to go to find help.

[Solar Communes]

The night was almost over. The vertical streets seemed to be like glancing moments into Charles mind, crossing them a trivial but endless matter, as, having no idea of where to go, he simply wandered, without any purpose, paying attention to the details around to get his mind off the facts. There was a powerful man or organization either hunting it or others like it, and he had no idea why. Considering the dimensions of the base that was just compromised, he wondered if the truth was about to surface, were the men who assaulted the one who stood behind to protect him on intent to let the Confederation know of their existence. Without a clear sense of purpose, soon, dread feelings began to awaken.

"I haven't asked for this. This scientist, this miserable wretch!" Charles Depardieu began to think while his feeling of hatred increased, wondering if he ever could stand a chance of taking revenge against the man who did this to him, a primal urge to kill, to inflict suffering upon he who ruined her, his, its life forever. But he had no idea about how to start, about how to track an enemy who could change his very face and identity into anything, becoming essentially untraceable.

"Damnation! I won't be able to achieve anything alone! The man who brought me there is almost certainly dead and if I told this to anyone they would hunt me!" Charles kicked a trash bin, prompting a nearby robot to clean the mess as soon as he made it, while he continued to aimlessly wander through the streets of Noveau Paris, observing everything. The shadows of the night seemed to be laughing at his demise, while wandering, he only hope to stumble in somewhere with guidance, being a man lost in the mazes of a glass jungle.

Time became more difficult to measure amidst the Ennui of wandering without purpose, and the almost absolute emptiness of the streets simply signaled an impending but yet never happening danger. The many open places he glanced seemed pointless to check for clue: bars, pubs, orgy clubs, night clubs, discothèques, Simulated realities, drug houses. All seemed futile, and no matter where he arrived, he expected to find no help. Nowhere to go and nothing to do became too phrases repeating over his thoughts.

Finally, from the distance, the first rays of light began to come to the horizon, when he, finding no point into continuing to walk through the streets, looked above at the rising sun, and pondered about what to do. There were limited options short of a blind search, and thus, he decided to forsake his worries for a while and try to drown everything into a drink of Cocaine-cola coupled with some heavy drugs, hoping that his transformation wouldn't deprive him of such possibilities.

And thus, by chance, he got into the nearest bar. It was a far higher standard one, most likely with an eldar rather than human owner from its decoration. Opening its double wooden doors, he reached the center of its pillared lounge, where a small group of people drank and chatted, and came to the bartending robot, asking immediately:

"A bottle of Cocaine-Cola."

The robot began to observe him closely, and then, shook its head, informing in a dry and emotionless voice:

"You have no energy credits, dude."

He knew it was foolish to pick up a fight with a machine, but his frustration was almost getting beyond his control. Thus Charles decided to simply tap the robot's shoulder and insist one more time:

"One bottle of cocaine-cola."

"Thank you for your choice!" the robot answered, as he began to carry the bottle and a glass towards his table. Charles became particularly confused about how exactly he managed to hack the robot into believing he had credits, considering that he left all his remaining credits in his house, and returning or trying to make an easily traceable transfer now would be foolish. Hopefully, it would work. Slowly, he began to take sips from the bubbling drink, and after his third glass, he began to feel a numbness, and finally felt relieve since everything began. Preparing to gulp another glass, while he began to move the glass, suddenly a man spoke behind him:

"Mind if I take a seat?"

"No," he answered, as his drink was interrupted. The man who sat next to him was familiar. He began to try remembering who he was, when finally he realized, and with a surprised looked, asked:

"Hernán de Voere?"

"Yes, man, surprised to see me here? We're in an anarchy after all man, remember? I don't need a swarm of bodyguards following me." he smiled.

"Charles Depardieu, nice to meet you." he answered back, temporarily forgetting his desire of getting into a stupor.

"I hope I am not intruding, but I can sense from your gestures you are trying to forget yesterday. Had a tough day?" he tried to approach him, seemingly friendly and particularly interested.

"Yeah, I just lost my creds in Victoria Online," Charles bluffed, hoping he would trick the man into believing, "been playing that game for thirty years, and now I was relegated to a damn n00b again!"

"I don't see the appeal in games that are more annoying and stressing than real life, Charles. Never played any." Hernan answered, as he motioned to the bottle, to which Charles nodded, not minding to share his drink.

"Maybe you are right, those games are shit, but I'm still on a hangover from it. I still didn't adjust to the fact I've been living for thirty years in a simulated world I thought that was real."

"Don't worry, you'll adjust faster than you can imagine." Hernan seemed to put a heavy emphasis when he mentioned the word "adjust", making Charles ponder. After all, why the sudden interest for him? He began to suspect the famed diplomat knew about his situation but was playing dumb for reasons he didn't understand.

"Right, now," Charles tapped his chin, "I wonder why you vanished from the diplomatic scene all of a sudden. It almost looked like you were gone."

"I got bored from it, the masks, the deception, the pretending you are friendly to someone thing. I found out this wasn't really my thing. I prefer being authentic, myself, away from this bullshit that is diplomacy, and I fell glad to know we aren't the most talkative in foreign relations," he smiled, "helps a lot in maintaining the facade, because we aren't good liars after all."

"All right, so Hernán, are you doing anything right now or just slacking?"

"I think I deserve an one-hundred years long vacation," Hernán smiled, "I lost account of how many times I managed to avoid a civil war here," he then wondered, "you aren't one of the hate preachers advocating the annihilation of all eldar, are you?"

"I don't think I would be allowed inside if I were," Charles smiled, "but for someone like you that should be obvious enough."

"Of course! I heard about the owner of this establishment," Hernán replied, nodding, "I think her name was Aune Delacroix, and she is a close relative of the cool pirate lady Marie, right?"

"Yes, yes." he couldn't hide his demonstration of shock as he finally remembered why he ended being there: it was his... its... her bar! And that was why he managed to bypass the robot when it claimed he had no credits. The familiarity of the layout, the feeling it was more homely than he expected, finally it became obvious.

"Charles, I need to go to the bathroom."

"Me too," he answered, realizing why he said that. Following Hernán, he entered in the otherwise empty bathroom with him, as Hernán then looked deeply at his eyes, and spoke through his mind:

"Aune, I know what happened to you."

"Did it happen to you as well? Who did it?"

"Aune, I don't remember, I just woke up in the evening one day and everything started. But I know how to help you. I know the stronghold has been attacked."

"How do you know it? Why?" Aune answered back, her telepathic thoughts muddled with increased doubts she kept to herself.

"I ordered the attack Aune, but not to kill you. This is far more complicated than you think, Aune, it's a difficult situation and there is a terrible truth I have learned about our condition."

"What, how could you?" Aune scowled, and began to hostilely approach him,

"Don't! Don't take conclusions before I explain you everything!" he shouted at her mind.

"Spit it!"

"Aune, the 'design flaws', the transformation, it is irreversible. We will have to live up with these flaws for all eternity... I fear we will have to entertain the sick fuck who engineered this by sucking blood," he sighed, interrupting his train of telepathic thoughts, "for all eternity, but even then, try to understand this Aune: this may be the greatest achievement in our story if employed for a good purpose. And you, Aune, I think that whoever created you had good intentions, but lacked the sanity to execute it properly. You are far closer to flawlessness than myself."

"No! You can't be talking the truth! I can't live like this forever!" Aune shouted into his mind.

"I am sorry, but we have to cope with it. At least we were transferred by the latest strains, which lack the photoreactive nanite ignition system."

"No! I will find a cure to this limitation Hernán, no matter how much long it takes! It can't be irreversible! We have cheated death!" Aune began to argue, "our ancestors thought it was impossible to avoid death by old age, and most of our people still believe that it is impossible to transfer our consciousness from the brain to somewhere else! You can't claim that, there must be a way to fix it so we never will have to do it again!"

"There is a minimal chance there is a way to perfect your self and mine, but I am a realist person, I don't cling to faint chances, Aune, but it is your choice: if the hope of finding a way to perfection of your new self helps you accept what you've become, I won't try to stop you from searching such way."

"I will find it," Aune answered with determination, as she then changed her mood to one of doubts again, "but what about the attack? Why did you order it."

"I expected they would try to kill you, and when I was informed they didn't, it was already too late. I have made an enemy out of The Many now, and I expect they will seek vengeance, considering how they care about their brothers."

"I understand this Many you speak of, but what about the Pastafari I heard about before?"

"Aune, the Pastafari is an organization formed by the Internet-people, which goal is to further their chaotic agenda formed by a mash of Internet memes. Trying to understand them is like trying to seek a purely therapeutical cure to schizophrenia. All you need to know is that they are dangerous, and began to commit terrible acts, including pedophilia, necrophilia and things I'd rather not describe in depth, based upon the greatest cesspool that lies amidst the Internet. But there are dozens more of organizations among the dustpeople."

"Dustpeople?"

"Some unoriginal bloke's name for us, because we can become a dust of nanites if so we desire. But I suppose it would be challenging to find a scientific name for what we are. We are not biological species, for one, and neither just mind uploaded consciousnesses. We are like dust, actually, it is a fitting term."

"Could you brief me on the other country clubs?

"Very well, Aune. You already know of the Many and the Pastafari. Besides them there are the Nihilants, who are... unsavory fellows who once belonged to the Entropic Legions and think they are destined to wipe out life from the galaxy because of a fanfic about necrons or something. The Lizardpeople who, ehm, think they are aliens from outer space in a cabal that secretly rules the planet. The Dustmasons, a secret society rip-off from the Invisible Network idea and I have no idea what is their true goal, and..." he smiled, "bored already?"

"Yes, most of them look like multiplayer guilds or something. But there was something that guy from The Many told me, when I convinced him to not kill me, and it worries me.

"What is it Aune? Everything you tell me will help us to create the next Solarian out of the flawed prototypes we are."

"He told me I created a sort of holographic vision, showing that whoever did this to me was using a rat, and the most strange thing is that he mentioned there was something that could be a RR Cyberware identification card, which according to him only exists in the Solarian home universe."

"I see. We will soon discover where exactly this infected rat is spreading the virus. And I fear it will be necessary to eliminate more than the rat to stop a catastrophe. Did the one of the Many told you about the problem of Entropy?"[i]

[i]"Yes, he mentioned that if we become too numberful this world's ecosystem will never be able to withstand our tenfold energy needs compared to biological beings."

"Indeed, Aune, and don't forget it before thinking to infect another one with your flawed prototype too. The Solarians will willingly accept the perfect version, but never accept to become like us."

"But the Many said I cannot control it, that if I touch someone to drain blood this one will be infected regardless of my will!"

"Wrong! The crazy men who do this use irrational animals as vectors, because when the transformation happens in a non-sentient being, it will infect anything it touches, but when it happens in a sentient being, it will only reach others if the being desires for it to happen. It is a peculiarity of our selves."

"I see. Now Hernán, thank you for explaining everything, but I don't think I can take sides. The Many, they seemed reasonable, just fearful of what I could mean to their survival."

"Aune, I am a diplomat, not a fighter," he smiled, "I will end this without bloodshed if possible. I only did what I thought necessary to save you and the future of our people"

When he mentioned the future of our people, Aune began to wonder what exactly he was implying, and thus, she asked:

"Wait, what do you mean by the future of our people? Aren't they safe in their current state? Why is it necessary for everyone to become like us, but better?"

"Was it necessary for the bovines to become sentient like a certain group of primates did in Earth? No, but this group of primates ended transforming the bovines that didn't progress into cattle, to be eaten and savored, even today, by our people. It may take hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of years, but if we stop progressing, eventually those who didn't will come to toss us into the slaughterhouse. This is a cruel universe, Aune, far more cruel than our home universe."

"I understand, but I still don't know what to do."

"Go back home Aune. Change back to your original body. I know you took this form fearing I wanted you dead, but now that you know nobody has anyhing against you, just try to survive and run your businesses like usual. I may ask for your help later, but it is up to you whether to accept or refuse helping me, and I won't breed hard feelings about that" he smiled, while Aune felt a heavy burden going away from her for the first time since everything began. Bidding "him" farewell, Hernán then left the bar, as Aune went to the woman's bathroom, and began to concentrate. It was ten of morning when she finally retorned to her original form, and looking at her mirror, she seemed alleviated. Things wouldn't be the same again, but at least she knew nobody was after her and could pretend having a normal life.

Many weeks would then go on and the former elf lady returned to her old routine, while discretely, Aune would handshake people and drain small sips of their blood through her fingers, so small that they would never realize what she did. She continued managing her bar, sleeping, talking and drinking like before, but she missed Edward, knowing he was permanently dead, for two days after his demise she found out the confirmation. And thus, a tale has ended, as another of the most harmless and uncompromised dustpeople lived amidst the biologicals, or like some xenos as strange as the dustpeople preferred to call them, "meatbags", not picking sides in the bizarre disputes amidst hundreds of organizations without much sense or visible purpose.

Or perhaps, the tale was just beginning.

[Solar Communes]

(OOC Warning: If you have nightmares easily from watching horror movies, don't read this post)

Things have began to return to the near normalcy of Aune's former life. It made her feel better to simply pretend nothing happened and try to live as normally as possible. Aune didn't vanish, and still met her friends, who unlike the Solarians, were more willing to get out physically rather than through virtual realities. Fortunately, it seemed the transformation did little to stop her from getting doped through alcohol and other means. It was in one day like any other, when many months, in fact, almost an entire year already passed by since her transformation. Aune swam over a complex of large pools, specially built for divers with long underwater tunnels connecting each pool, and a maze of underwater chambers for those who dared to take the challenging of diving through a labyrinth also existed. Of course, there were machines that would provide oxygen to prevent someone from drowning, but most newcomers didn't know such fact.

Normality. Life just became again the cycle of entertainment and sleep with one work day per week the minority of Confederation people who still worked had, but this day, Aune was feeling something strange, an uneasy feeling that crawled under her skin. Instinctively, she tried to relax. Floating over the pool, she drank a cocktail with a particularly heavy dosage of drugs, to in an attempt to forget everything.

"Bored?" the voice suddenly came behind her, as Aune looked back, seeing a man who swam next to her.

"Mind your own business, loser." the answer was clear and obvious. Aune wouldn't give in anything to another annoying Casanova wannabe.

"Hey! No need to be like this!" he sighed, "fine bitch, waiting for your girlfriend?"

"Pool is Closed! Get the fuck out you piece of AIDS!" Aune wasn't in a good mood today, and a jerk was the last thing she would want. Throwing a threatening glance, she grabbed him by the neck with an unseen strength and agility, beyond what his augmented reflexes could block, nearly choking him, "consider this a warning!"

"Freak!" he shouted while he swam as far as possible from her, while Aune observed from afar, as a group of jerks laughed and ridiculed him, Aune grinned, for it seems that it was part of another immature bet. At least now probably nobody would bother her anymore. Aune once again began to take the drink, when suddenly, her act was again stopped as she listened to something that seemed very important being broadcasted through the Brain Nets.

"This is a maximum alert warning!" when the voice echoed through millions of minds, a primal mix of fear and hatred began to flourish amidst those few old enough to have seen the last time such an alert was issued, the time when the Silicoids were discovered, and their brutal attacks against the colonists in Gliese 581d began, not stopping until the last one of them was exterminated.

"People of the Confederation. As some of you might know, the number of wicked murders in the suburbs of Noveau Paris, which all shared a common fact: the fact all corpses were completely drained of blood, has been increasing dramatically through the the last two weeks,"

Aune didn't simply await listening. Discretely, to avoid suspicion, she began to leave the pool, while the message was still being broadcasted, for it was obvious what the final message would be. The thought, terrible but real, came to her mind, for Aune now was aware of what would become of her, of what would be necessary to survive.

"which has been a mysterious case, something that never happened before in our history. In fact, it has been the first crime to be registered in the Confederation for centuries. Private investigators have been trying to understand what sort of wicked person would do such a thing, until something far more terrible than those crimes has been uncovered: the survival of both human and elvenkind is at stake!"

There was a terrible fear, that sooner or later, someone would suspect the fact she was leaving the club in, no matter how hard she tried to disguise it, a hurry. Aune, after all, didn't even bother grabbing her other clothes, leaving them behind while she, still wearing a bikini, left by the front gate and entered inside her car. The fact nobody else left didn't contribute for her cover either.

In the streets, there was nothing suspicious about a woman driving a car in wearing only a bikini, but eventually something bad would happen. While driving towards her own bar, where she kept a small survival gear for emergencies, which mostly involved tools that vanquished the lives of others to guarantee her own survival, Aune suddenly received a private message in her head.

"Aune? It's over! I tried to stop them but I couldn't! That scientist! That damn scientist who did this to you! He ruined everything by spreading the vector! Everything! Now, I am afraid of telling you the consequences right now! This encrypted message is unbreakable, I am sending you some coordinates amidst the Ardennes forest. If you survive, you should go at this location!"

She intuitively knew where to go as soon as the message was received, but first, Aune had to reach her hidden "first aid" station. And thus she continued driving, hoping to reach it before the broadcast, which was fortunately a bit too long for her luck, finished."

"...and thus, these aliens have infiltrated among us, wearing the bodies of the victims they killed, while feeding from our lives. There is still no idea of how long they existed. The only certainty is that, no matter the cost, these aliens must be exterminated! They are a threat for our survival, and there is no way to talk with them, they are monsters, parasitical monsters that see us as nothing but cattle! However, be warned: these xenos scum are not easy to be killed: they are able to assume any form and become dust: most weapons are worthless against them unless they are unable to change their shapes! And there is only one way to achieve that: you must take them by surprise, drugs, and whatever vulnerability the fact they cling to the existences of their victims give them, and then, break permanently their ability to focus in changing their shapes, by either keeping them in a permanent state of excruciating pain, or by sealing them inside a mold with the same shape of their bodies and cavities, which will allow for you to kill or neutralize them easily! Or if you prefer, EMP works nicely as well!"

Aune boiled with a fury that was fueled whenever she heard the purest hypocrisy: "Monsters? They want to torture me, kill me, they lie I am no longer myself and then they call me a monster?" the transmission was almost ending, which meant soon she wouldn't be safe anymore.

"We are sending several of our military assets to help you to cleanse this threat from our beautiful planet. There is one way to identify them. I presume most of you have a thermal vision: I am sending for download the atypical heat signature of these monsters for those willing to get it, this way it will be impossible for them to hide from you. I am seeing fifty million downloads already, that is the spirit people! We must not bow down to the aliens! We must show this scum which tried to infiltrate our people we won't take easily such treasonous acts! Kill them all! Kill them all!"

Aune shut down the transmission, but downloaded the signature, allowing for her to identify the few friends, or at least people not willing to kill her on sight, to be found. The car just parked on her bar as the transmission ended. Walking inside her bar, she shuddered as she for the first time sad to know she was the owner of a popular establishment. Very hostile glares began to be exchanged at her, while she cautiously began to move upstairs. It seemed like at any moment anyone would draw a weapon and start shooting at her.

She suddenly threw herself over the ground, just in time to dodge an electroshock bullet as a particularly annoyed man took the iniative. Aune then rolled once over the floor and quickly raised, when she noticed as bullets began to fly all around, and realizing she had only a window of opportunity to escape, she rapidly focused, becoming dust just before one of those terrible bullets, capable of inflicting terrible pain. It was a close call, but a time, when things got off control. She just could still see, several times magnified, the disgusting men who started everything. His face was now of fear rather than hatred, while Aune approached him. Looking at his face, Aune began to feel as it like if his entire body was a pile of clay, and, driven by hatred, aware they would most likely have tortured her for countless days, if not also abused her, with a twisted artistic sense, like that of a sculptor of clay figures, Aune began to twist his very muscles, bones, and skin. There was an horrible scream echoing, but her hatred numbed her sense of compassion, while slowly, the other people in the bar ran away, some wetting their pants of terror. The screams lasted until she glued his mouth and made his eyeballs pop inside his ears, while shaping his torso into a nearly flat piece of flat, and the silent, tormented man, or what was left of him, still demonstrated clear signs of suffering beyond anything ever imagined. Twisting his arms and legs into spiraled legs, she finally finished with him, as where once a man existed, the most hideous bar stool ever imagined now lied.

When her rage passed away, Aune suddenly felt a terrible repulsion from look at it, so terrible that it triggered her to assume her phyiscal form, while she gasped in horror, feeling a terrible sense of guilt.

"Oh no! I didn't do this! I didn't do this!" she shouted to herself, as, refusing to accept the truth, she threw a blanket over the hideous thing she transformed the man who tried to torture and kill her into, while gurgling sounds of agony came from it. She ran towards her office, still sweating with shock over what she just had done. Looking at her reflexion over the mirror, she muttered the same words over and over:

"I am not a monster!"

"I am not a monster!"

Aune threw her fist against the mirror, shattering it into many pieces, as, while still shaking, she placed her hand over the safe, as reading her prints, it opened. Grabbing a small gauss pistol and dozens of magazines stacked on a belt, Aune loaded it while placing the belt over her bare midriff. Still frightened, Aune returned to the lounge, and, looked at the blanket... where he was. She aimed her pistol, and began to fire against it, emptying an entire magazine, as the gurgling noise stopped, and she felt a mild alleviation for having putting him out of such misery she placed him into. Loading another magazine, Aune carefully opened the front door of her bar, unsure about how "heated" would be the reception on the outside. But she knew she couldn't just wait for them to get her. Robots had no fear, and soon they would come to kill her.

However, it was the thought of what she just has done that mostly haunted her mind, and while she struggled to survive, and to not lose what she still had of morality, other events unfolded through the Confederation.

------------

Expectingly, the declaration about an alien race that according to the majority of the population threatened the survival of the Confederation wasn't sent only to their own people. The owner of the voice that advocated the genocide of all those who have been transformed into what they considered to be monsters and parasites also wrote a message, hoping that he would get some help to minimize human and eldar casualties in the inevitable conflict that was to come. He was sure they would win in the end, but if they had allies, the price of victory would be smaller in innocent lives.

To the ESUS Battlenet

We have uncovered the existence of a hideous, self-replicating alien lifeform capable of disguising itself as the victims it killed, like the mythical doppelgangers, living inside our Confederation as most likely a way to slowly destroy our peoples. These abominations not only kill their victims to assume their identities, but also feed upon human and eldar blood, and have been reported to be able to do absolutely gruesome things with their victims. We are requesting aid from those who may help us to cleanse our world from such threat, which is not only a threat to our survival, but to the entire life in planet Eden, for they are like maggots, corrupting, feeding upon the very life, and consuming far more than what any natural environment could sustain, and I dare not to think the consequences to the galaxy if they are allowed to spread.

It is inevitable that we will end into a civil war, for it is likely some people with military assets have also been "replaced" by these doppelgangers, as proven by the fact even our diplomatic representative in the ESUS, Hernán de Voere, has been killed and had his identity assumed by one, but no matter what, there is only one certainty: these aliens cannot be trusted: they are parasites, which could easily devour worlds like swarms of mantises if they are allowed to spread and multiply. If any of those we consider our allies could help us with them, we would be extremely grateful, and not forget it should once situations lead you to need of our aid as well.

- Marcus Metzger, newly elected representative of the Eshair-Solarian Confederation.

[Solar Communes]

If nothing moves in you when you hear a baby wail as her mother is murdered, I have nothing to say to you. Then add my name to the list of "traitors." Because I am ready to share the grief and pain with the Armenians. Because I still believe there is something yet to be rescued from all these meaningless and pitiless arguments, and that something is called 'humanity.'

Ahmet Altan - Universal Database

2 months later

There was a smell of ash in the air, the smell of burning wood. A large fire, spreading and killing everything in its path, started by the hands of men, approaching. A hidden clearing, beneath a cover of several immense trees, with a silo buried beneath the ground. The way was clear, for when looking at the distant fires, he knew that there was no more hope. He knew that hundreds of thousands of miles above him, the divided space force clashed, causing sufficient havoc to perhaps trigger a Kessler into such planet, while dead husks orbited. It was intuition to know such facts, for every mind was somehow, connected. hundreds were dying, trees fell through the magnetic forces of hovertanks, aircrafts fell amidst massive battles for air supremacy, submarines exchanged torpedoes beneath the seas. Another world war in the history of mankind, only this time it was a war fought not for land or wealth, but for survival.

Hernán de Voere knew everything. They were losing the war. Despite their uncanny ability to hack into computer systems, despite the greater resilence of their selves, those who sought the complete genocide of his people were still more numberful and had most of the planetary industries under their control. There was a limit for universal constructors, as theirs were reaching such limit. Even worse, the planet was dying. After two months of war, a significant amount of the Ardennes has been deforested. However, there were other critical truths to be learned. A divided home could only get worse, and there was another minority that has been seen as a hindrance to the human race, and only not outright annihilated due to a sense of honor that Alina Herrers had. However, Alina didn't return, and now, another person was trying to play the cards along the alienated and slobbering humanity.

Marcus Metzger's goal was not only the extermination of the so called dustpeople. Only a fool wouldn't realize what was the next kin to be exterminated in his agenda. A heavy advocate of the supremacy and superiority of the human race, Metzger has lobbied for the complete extermination of the eldar since the day he set foot on this world. He was the most known representative of the "oldschool thought", which was more properly described as "death to the alien scum!". The discovery of the dustpeople was most likely just a stepping stone for his genocidal goals. Of course, perhaps they were right in this case, many of the dustpeople have become truly monsters from a human perspective, before they were pushed and hunted. It was not a simple matter, to make judgment about who was right and who was wrong. Monsters didn't sacrifice themselves to save the innocent from being slaughtered, monsters didn't do their best to save the lives of children, regardless of their being from the enemy or not. Yet, it was not a monstrosity feared by character, but by power. The dustpeople had in their hands the ability to commit atrocities beyond everything mankind has done before should they decide to become monsters, a terrible capability that only nightmares and morbid horror fictions ever envisioned before. However, so far, the human beings seeking the genocide of the dustpeople have been far more monstrous. Never mind the fact that once they were friends and families. Brother killing brother, parents killing their children, children killing their parents, because of something they didn't chose to become. It was perhaps the most horrific war ever fought in the history of the Confederation.

"Nobody else has managed to find safety," his words echoed through the woods, "these are the only noncombatants who survived, the fire will reach through here soon, and once the cover is blown, our enemies won't see problems into obliterating this base with kinetic and nuclear weapons."

There was nobody hearing him, at least to the naked eye, but they were there, many of them. He could hear their voices, their fears, he knew they had no other place to go. He knew that millions would die, and others, who preferred to retain their human shape, flocked to the location, evoking scenes of past wars between men as millions of refugees tried to escape another genocide. They were losing the war, a war where the only goal, for most of them, was to defend their own lives. He observed as wind was blown towards the silo's entrance, the large transport shuttle inside it began to gain life. Some people also were around, running through ladders and corridors to reach the shuttle. Suddenly, a woman simply materialized in front of Voere, with visible stress lines in her face, like someone who has experience much already.

"How long can we secure orbital and space superiority?" he looked at the silo, aware that more dozens of thousands would soon be safe. Other silos have been captured for use. It was not a simple retreat. The "pure" humans were about to win the battle for Eden. He wondered about many questions meanwhile, particularly from the one who he presumed that perished. Aune, she claimed to have witnessed what could imply the end of the Great Isolation, or the existence of an unknown pathway through the home universe of the Solarians. It was a pity she didn't make through. Aune was one step closer to true transcendence... the secret, the desired secret behind this: the capability of transferring the true consciousness and sentience from the brain to another vessel. It was something Hernán has sought to discover for years. For they knew only how to apply such transfer, not the knowledge and theory behind it... there was definitively more to sentience than just an organic brain, and that already was a grand revelation, one that could be forever lost into ignorance and fear as another kind of sentience fell prey to hatred and genocide.

"Two days! I don't think we stand a chance after that!" the woman answered, and Hernan fully realized the implications. They would not be able to evacuate everyone. This dread new holocaust would be far from over. He tried to forget the atrocities, the tortures, the abuses. He couldn't believe that his people have degraded so much... it was a terrible thought, to think as how the supposed paragon of liberty became a mirror of genocidal tyrannies that happened eons ago.

"The Many... they," Hernán didn't want to speak the words. It pained him to announce the dire reality, the numbers of yet another genocide in history, "they told me that two millions of their people only already were butchered. We... we must do something more than this!"

"There is nothing we can do now... I didn't know Eden's second name was Sudan." the woman answered, referring to another tragic past event of human history. People desperatedly cluttered the silo, as the first shuttle began to take off with refugees, and the fires of the forest seemed to become closer every second.

"Our anti-ballistic missiles are ready. Why didn't you come in the first shuttle, Hernán?"

"Lisa, I am not leaving until everyone is safely evacuated!" he answered, while streams of information passed through his mind. He began to filter it, to avoid madness and despair. The recordings were too much for any person to bear. Scenes of terrible brutality, not like the cold, clean and cynical extermination of aliens done from orbit as was the usual in Solarian history... it was done machetes, flamethrowers, and things that could only be described as torture devices, with a degree of savagery and inhumanity never seen for thousands of years.

But... somehow, there was one of the recordings that he couldn't block... the sight just terrified him. He couldn't stop it, the horror. It was an atrocity that made him want to vomit.

---------

A circle was formed around the street. A circle of hatred. In the middle of the circle, Aune withered, she was in obvious pain, with several electrodes placed over her body. They were using electroshock to torture her and make it impossible for her to become dust and escape. It was a terrible sight. Her face made the suffering very noticeable. People spitted over her, stomping her. The horror intensified as Hernan could hear a voice suggesting:

"Hey! Why don't we see if her skin will grow back if we peel it? Don't you like playing with flesh you freak? Yes? This is for what you did to my friend!"

He watched it. It was the most horrible thing he has ever witnessed in his life. They were so terrible that they immobilized Aune with razor wire, after stripping her naked. It was something he tried to stop seeing but somehow he couldn't. As the razor dug into her skin and she began to bleed significantly, a disgusting man began to do what they claimed. Using a knife, he slowly began to skin her. The screams of torment matched a vision of Hell. It was terrible, the man removed slowly every inch of skin from her body, turning it into stripes that were pulled off the razor wire. Hernan insisted to cut it off, but it didn't work... he watched his newest friend in agony, helpless to do anything. They laughed then, after five minutes, when the agonizing woman grew her skin back.

"Hey! Why don't we get a taste of such skin closer..." the scumbag said as he ripped the razor wire from her body. He then forced her to wear a pair of strange boots, when Aune's agony seemed to intensify even more. She seemed so beaten that she didn't have any strength to fight back. He then disable the electroshock machine, aware that the terribly inhuman boots he developed would be sufficient. The boots were lined with blades all inside them, that made several moves, mutilating the feet of the victim and inflicting the constant pain necessary to paralyse a dustperson. Then, both men and women around the circle took turns, ganging Aune... Hernán tried to cut off the scenes from his head, but they refused to leave.

Then, after such terrible suffering and humiliation, he saw the scene where a bunch of robots carried a sarcophagus like thing that had the exact shape of Aune's body. The scum opened it, as it could be seem that from inside, the sarcophagus had things that seemed to match the dimensions of all cavities of her body... the object seemed to have exactly the amount of space to fit her inside, nothing more, nothing less. The shapes that seemingly were built to fill in all her cavities, including those of her internal organs, began to retract, as one of the man gestured for them to be very careful now. The robots lifted Aune, and quickly, they removed the boots and threw her violently against the sarcophagus, closing it immediately. The noises of the sarcophagus pieces digging inside the hollows of her entrails and organs could be heard for a while, coupled with an agonizing gurgling, until they stopped.

"Death is too merciful for scum like these!" one of the man laughed... "These devices are the closest thing to Hell ever... I really don't want to be the one locked inside one of these one forever. But this bitch: she transformed my best friend into an organic bar stool and kept him alive and conscious while doing it! Do you believe that? She deserves this, this demon!"

The imagery showed as they moved the sarcophagus to, ironically, Aune's former bar.

--------------

"Aune is not dead... but," Hernán said to everybody nearby, "she is in great pain, and she could be the key to everything. I need to get her!"

"But Hernán! Your friend is hundreds of kilometers behind their immense army! You don't have a..."

"Escape? Run away?" Hernán challenged, "leave behind people like Aune, to an eternity trapped in a man-made Hell? Is that what we are going to do?"

"But be careful Hernán, and know that it won't be easy to bring her back... and that..." a deep sigh came, "your friend, your friend won't be the same again. They broke her. I don't think if she would be even sane once you get her out of that place, and if you manage to do that."

"I have to take the risks, it's the only way!"

And thus, a new chapter unfolded.

[Solar Communes]

Looking at the war from a bird's eye view was a strange experience. It made the purposes and moves easier to be seen, but at the same time, gave a clinical coldness to the sight of war. It was far less brutal from such perspective to watch, but even at such sight, Hernán knew what it implied while he used his means to gain a greater tactical insight of the front lines. It was the time for an ambitious breakthrough, so he could rescue the one who could have the answer to everything. He knew every move, every location, everyone who died. Looking throughly at the terrain and sky, he began to suggest, insinuate how the minority of sentient combatants should move, while controlling the mass of humanoid combat robots and AIs that controlled all the vehicles and aircrafts. He knew exactly what had to be done.

"This is madness!" a voice he couldn't bother identifying shouted, "we don't stand a chance, they have been forcing us into retreat! We are outnumbered!"

"Wrong! The solution, the path to victory was available all along, right at our hands, and we just ignored it as much as our enemies did!" Hernán answered back to whoever was trying to persuade him to give up, "all it took was one comparison, one comparison between the recorded performance of human soldiers during the Fourth World War and the," he coughed, "performance of the humanoid robots, and it's obvious how to proceed. No matter what, these machines can't really be as competent in battle as a sentient human would be, and we have been too liberal, giving to them too broad orders instead of going through the chore of defining more specifically what they should do. I ask for all with experience in tactics to help me optimize our resources, so we may repeat the same success of our ancestors in the Fourth World War against numerically superior forces."

"But most of our people are in orbit!"

"Broadcast my request, whoever you are! Uplink them to the surface! We need minds, not preprogrammed dumb AIs with the same competence of an artificial intelligence found in any modern strategy game! And send this request to our space command! We need as many commanders as we can! Disable as many automated tactical and logistical processes as our manpower allows!" Hernán insisted, as he awaited, hoping enough people would answer his call to proceed with his plan.

The strategic situation wasn't helpful. Most of the dustpeople forces, and refugees, have been divided and surrounded into multiple pockets across the planet, which their "enemies" were trying to close. The Lille desert had the largest of all pockets, where the easeness the dustpeople military found to blend themselves with sand, covering their heat signatures as well, made of such environment perfect for guerilla warfare and ambushes. Most of the armored forces of the dustpeople also lied in Lille, which wasn't truly a very good situation for them. On the other hand, the southern continent was almost entirely under their control, although it had a particularly low population density.

The Ardennes pocket could perhaps be the first step to change this situation, and Hernán began to conclude on what breaking through the lines of the enemy would provoke. If they could truly get inside Noveau Paris again, the havoc would buy enough time for the universal constructors to double the size of their forces before they were captured by the enemy.

"Retreating, we have been retreating for way too long. Will anyone listen to my call?" Hernán said to whoever could be listening him.

Then he suddenly knew as thousands began to assume tactical positions along the front, and his mind was flooded with questions about how he intended to succeed. He already ellaborated a plan, a plan that would force the enemy to concentrate their hastily made defenses once they manage to break the momentum of their attack.

"We should launch a diversionary counter-attack against the second space elevator. They are going to put everything there because of the strategic importance of it, thinking it is our goal. The rest of us, we must retreat controlledly forming salients, lure their dumb robots and exploit their algorithms, then encircle them slowly, destroying them while advancing. I'll leave the details and maximization of terrain to you... and good to see we have a proper air general with us. Neutralization of all air defenses will be your priority, comrade."

He also knew the same question was being asked over and over, about the importance of Aune. He began to ponder on how to explain it, until he finally connected two facts that could pretty much imply that the dregs who did such a thing to her, or maybe someone using them, knew that Aune was too important to be immediately slaughtered.

"Aune, unlike all their other victims, wasn't immediately killed, only locked in a cruel device that was developed as a torture chamber against our kind. They would have killed her outright if she was just another one. Why didn't they? I hope you understand this, I have no feelings for her, and I am only doing this because I am sure she hold knowledge that could be critical for our survival."

Most doubts seemed to have been answered. It wasn't his best moment, and surely he made better arguments before, but it still worked. Now, it was time to begin. Immediately, several pilot-less CL-381s began to take off from clearings amidst the woods, where they were in before, waiting for a potential last attempt to turn the tide of the so called "French Theater" of this war.

They went decisively, taking the enemy by surprise. Their squadrons, backed by swarms of smaller drones, advanced deep against the enemy lines, attacking all anti-air installations and radars, and downing several airborne early warning drones. However, the enemy still advanced, they went through lines, were confident that their dumb robots seemed to be breaking their enemy lines at ease with their superior numbers. Then Hernán finally realized it wouldn't be as simple as he first thought: there were just too many of them. It was thus a sign that he had to make a difficult decision, one that could lead to the complete destruction of the planet... however the other option was defeat, and likely extinction... they were being pushed too much, and perhaps, he wondered that to do so could also mean more.

"Maybe once we show ourselves not afraid of mutually assured destruction they would be willing to negotiate, Metzger is a murderer, but not a madman to risk the extinction of everyone. But if it leads to..."

"Hernán, we are losing this battle! They will cut right through the launch site, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees that could be slaughtered if they did!"

A deep sigh came from Hernán as he felt the burden of making such a choice. He checked the radius calculations, and began to instruct everyone on how to retreat. large circle-shaped gaps were being left in their lines through which the enemy forces advanced, gaps even the fighters have abandoned. From other silos, missiles quickly flew, harbingers of doom. The missiles quickly made their way, impacting at the very centers of the enemy formations. Mushroom clouds began to paint the battlefield, leaving massive, barren craters devoid of life amidst the forest. The announciation of a new moment in these dark times of Solarian history.

Thousands of years ago, the Third World War has nearly wiped out the human race... the devastation that could be provoked by the weapons of mass destruction of this new era is geometrically greater than the war that destroying three quarters of Earth, turning them into irradiated wastelands. If Metzger and those seeking the extermination of the dustpeople answered to such attack with tactical Helium-3 nuclear weapons with a total war, Eden would become Gehenna, and the future for the Solarians outside from their assumedly isolated home universe would be bleak.

However, there were hints found that perhaps the home universe of Solar Communes wasn't as isolated as they thought. The business card from a cooperative that existed only in such universe, found in the lab of the mad scientist who created her new existence, there must be an explanation for it. Could it be that the mysterious doctor found a way to access the old universe? Hernán thoughts shifted between the doubts about Aune and his fears of the consequences of what he just ordered.

He watched the coldness of the devastion from a bird's eye view, awaiting for the reaction that would come, while their forces finally began to advance.

[Solar Communes]

It is easy to go down to hell; Night and Day the Gates of Dark Death stand wide;
But to climb back up again, to retrace ones steps to the open air,
there lies the problem, the difficult task.

Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VI

There were no words to describe it in its fullest horrors. Perhaps Hell could be a good choice of word, but not enough. The events that preceded the great torment were distant horrors, insignificant to it. For Aune, it seemed an eternity, and her mind wavered, disturbed and beyond hope, sometimes she could not think on anything besides the pain, besides the fear, the construct of a mind too drenched in suffering to understand. Sometimes to further her suffering, she assumed her soul was being consumed by the dark god of lust and debauchery that cursed the souls of all of her former kin, that it was delighting over her last desperate attempts to not become an eternal slave to darkness.

It is impossible to describe the experience of languishing for two months into such perverted invention, every inch of her body covered, not even an inch for her to breathe or relax, causing complete immobilization, and every inch of her body being tortured by such device electrical discharges and blade-like nanites that dug against her body, including even her entrails, the pain was breaking her mind, destroying her, it was a horror beyond anything ever imagined, the work of a monster.

Then Aune felt a hand grabbing her, as she finally gasped, no longer feeling the blades, the shocks and the cold metal violating her entire body, the terrible sensation in the stomach of the strange metal ball that filled it, a sensation that made being impaled seem less horrible in comparison. But now, it was over, but she still felt it, her mind was still confused and couldn't remember yet what happened. Aune finally recovered her sight amidst such sensory overload, and, feeling terribly exhausted, she noticed as the man placed her over a bed, and looked at his face, still trembling and terrified. She could still not remember even her own name.

"Shh, it is over now, Aune." he brushed her hair with his hand in a comforting manner, while she struggled to forget it, to remember.

"Who are you?" her voice was raspy, and she felt a pain from speaking, a strange sensation that finally air was coming out of her throat after two months in such horrible imprisonment.

"I am Hernán de Voere... now just rest Aune, just...

Suddenly she lunged at him, as a voice whispered a name for her.

"Julius Lovecraft"

"Julius Lovecraft!" Aune shouted, grabbing him by his neck. Her pain finally diminished enough for her hunger to be felt, and she couldn't wait. However, she couldn't feel it. He was dry, he had no blood running in his veins. When she realized it, as he apparently didn't react to her sudden attack, Aune began to scratch the concrete floor with her fingertips, her mind lost into a frenzy of insanity that two months of constant suffering and hunger have provoked. Soon Hernán left, sealing the entire place to prevent a disaster.

Aune madness intensified, she began to see food in anything. It was a wooden table she began to attempt biting and eating, swallowing small pieces of wood. Not satisfying her, she eventually ended eating half of the table, when finally the door opened again, and a person was violently tossed inside the room.

Aune didn't even look at his face when she grabbed him by the neck with both hands. It was the first time she felt pleasure after two months of agony... it was fulfilling, satisfying, and she still held him when his last drop of blood was drained through her fingers, forcing his empty veins in the hopes of one more drop. Her mind finally began to become clearer, as she looked at the dead man she held by the neck, and Hernán came in again to the bedroom.

"Did I kill him?" she asked, seemingly unsure on what feeling to have about such fact.

"He deserved it, Aune. It was justice," he shrugged, "and vengeance as well."

"Vengeance? Why?" Aune tried, but she couldn't really recognize his face from her memory.

"I'd rather not explain it. It is better that you don't know." Hernán answered, as his faced indicated he just realized something.

"Was he the one who placed me in..." Aune suddenly shook her head, "I don't want to think about it anymore, it is over and that is all that matters." she seemed unwilling to delve much into the situation she was into until very recently.

"You are right, now... you mentioned a name Aune, Julius Lovecraft, does it remind you of anything?"

"Man, I really don't know. I just..." Aune pondered, "that name just came into my head, but I don't really remember meeting a person with such name. I... thank you for telling me my name."

"You're welcome. Now, just a minute... I am consulting something..." Hernán answered her, as Aune wondered what he wanted.

"No! This can't be real!"

"What is the matter?" Aune noticed his expression of utmost shock and disbelief.

"Julius Lovecraft is a member of RR Cyberware! Now all makes sense! But if..." Hernán began to ponder, "this means that there is no Great Isolation anymore, whoever started this mess didn't come from this universe, but from the home universe of Solar Communes! I can't believe it... and," he wondered, "we have sensors that would have detected such an anomaly if you were transported from here to another universe and back, this is a very puzzling fact."

"I don't understand what you are talking about, and what is your name?" Aune then looked down and frowned, "and you are a disgusting man, to talk normally while there is a dead man right next to us... where did you learn such manners?"

"Ehm, sorry Aune, it was just that discovering this was so much that I even forgot about this scumbag," he answered, a robot soon enough coming and dragging away the corpse, "and well, my name is Hernán de Voere, and I think you deserve to know everything," he shrugged, "again."

"So?"

"Aune, lets say that you were the test subject for a madman who conducted experiments to create a new form of self-replicating sentient being by transferring your consciousness, or 'soul' if you prefer to call it like that, to these microscopic self-replicating machines that now are your body, and mine as well." he cleared his throat, "but unfortunately you are, like me, a prototype rather than a perfect form of such idea, and we are unable to be self-sufficient in energy, and due to what I account as most likely somebody's deranged fantasy, we were engineered to use blood as the primary source of energy, as you just did with that scum. And we still look like how we were while organic because we cling to our shapes, but we can assume any shapes we can provided enough organic matter is available nearby, among other things."

"I see..." Aune seemed to not be shocked at all with his explanation, probably the result of being subjected to chronic, 24/7 torture for the last two months, "now, what is the rest of this history?"

"The fact is, that thanks to the madman who transformed you into this, the normal organic beings now are aware of our existence, and a very closed minded, murderous man called Metzger has asked for the population at large to exterminate us and kill every one of us... we have been at war for two months now, and I have risked a lot just to save you..." he smiled in a seemingly honest manner, "and it seems doing so paid off."

"We need to find this Julius Lovecraft Aune," he explained ,"he may be our last chance of survival. We must understand his motives, the reason why he did things that allowed for the normal people to discover our existence, for he couldn't really have done this out of naivety. He provoked this war on purpose! We must discover why."

"But you said he is in another universe, how do we find it?" Aune asked, finally relieved as a more pressing subject allowed her to forget all she went through for the time being.

"Lets go to your home Aune, maybe... maybe there could be some clues there, maybe he forgot something when he kidnapped you, we have to give it a try, and then, your bar of course."

"My bar? I... I don't remember." she stressed.

"Don't worry Aune, now just follow me, I think it is of your interest to come with me."

They began to walk away, eventually making their way through the skyway that connected with the building. There, an armored car lied, hovering over the pavement. Politely, Hernán opened the door for her, who still seemed weak and beaten, while he took the driver seat, and looked at her again, as she silently followed him. Aune asked him immediately:

"All right, de Voere, but... tell me about this Great Isolation you mentioned."

"The Great Isolation is a mystery. This planet was first colonized by your people, then by the Solarians, who came from a Hellish world named Sheol they destroyed, a world where the only rule was chaos. About the same time the Solarians reached this planet, which we call Eden, contact with their home universe was completely lost, and nobody ever found a way to restablish it, or reach it through travel in the Warp, in the webway or in any other form of interdimensional travel we are aware of. We were going to ask for their support to industrialize and modernize this world, but then we realized we would have to grow and progress on our own... and maybe it was for the best.

"For the best?"

"Aune... my father, he considered abortion when he knew he was going to have me as a son," Hernán answered with a gloomy face, "my human relatives only didn't decide to exterminate your entire kin because they needed you to help this world grow up and develop. If they could call the Solarians from the Home Universe with all their industrial might and likely billions of immigrants, as this planet is far better than all the planets there from what I know, they would have definitively chosen genocide as the option on how to deal with your people... I mean, the race you belonged to before you were transformed"

"But... why? I don't think they ever did anything wrong to the Solarians."

"Aune, the Solarian mainstream idea is that the very fact intelligent nonhumans are alive is a threat to mankind survival," he shrugged, "I don't really want to think how the Solarians from the home universe would react about this world... Eden would be to them what a Planet of Jews would be to a Interstellar Nazi Reich."

"Nazi? What is Nazi?"

"Nazis were humans who thought humans who didn't belong to their view of a 'superior man' had to be exterminated, and that the human people called Jews were the scum of Earth."

"Disgusting! Typical Mon-Keigh madness!" Aune answered him.

"I see you remembered that damn word," he shrugged, "very well, my point is, this world is a mockery to the traditional values for Solar Communes. I mean the values about the superiority and supremacy of the human race, a bunch of bullshit, considering they derive from the twentieth century concept of humanity, which is, as you may know, totally obsolete. But..." he shuddered, "if there is a connection to our home universe, that could happen, and then we would have no chance to stop another genocide attempt... and considering the," he coughed, "open-minded inhabitants of this planet want us dead, the inhabitants of the Solarian Universe would probably throw our ashes in a black hole to be sure."

"Then, are you saying we are doomed? That we will be exterminated?"

"No! That is not what I'm saying! There is the detail the home universe is oblivious to our existence, while Eden isn't, and this means that," Hernán sighed really deep, as he took a very disturbing conclusion from logically analyzing the facts, "if the Great Isolation was lost, there would be only one way for us to ensure our survival."

"Which way?"

"To forcefully make this entire planet become like us..." he sighed, "which would force us to hunt for blood in other worlds... or... I don't want to mention the alternative."

"I have suffered enough to no longer feel the pain of words, tell me Hernán, what do you think that is the only option?"

"It will be either us or them Aune... we will have to exterminate every sentient organic living being of this planet if we are to survive a first contact of the Solarian home universe," he seemed terribly shaken as he mentioned, "because otherwise we will be exterminated, for certain."

"What? Is there no other alternative? Will it really come to such a point? I know..." she sighed, "I know someone did this to me, but millions don't deserve to die over what half a dozen of scum have done."

"I wouldn't call one of each four of them 'half a dozen'," Hernán sighed, "this is a genocide done by the will of the majority..." he gestured as if he was going to puke, "another wonderful example of direct democracy." he then pondered.

"So, no other alternative?"

"No! There is another way, but I am not sure about it..." Hernán answered, "if we found the secret behind the transfer of consciousness from one 'vessel' to another, and proved we aren't doppelgangers like that scum called Metzger claims, we could..." he pondered, "I think that a perfect form of the dustperson wouldn't become a taboo. After all, many Solarians have forsaken the entirety of their bodies besides their brains already... if we managed to create the real dustpeople rather than the flawed prototypes we are, and transfer our consciousnesses to these new vessels, then we wouldn't have to take such a terrible option for survival."

"Do you think this Julius Lovecraft could be the answer?"

"Yes! We need to find a way to reach him, lets go to your home, Aune." Hernán then observed as the car began to move by itself.

It was perhaps a wild goose chase, but it was better to attempt it first, than to take the decision of slaughtering billions of lives through orbital annihilation as the only choice to secure his survival. He has been through a tough battle already for Aune, he couldn't really end like that. He already had to sacrifice certain principles by subduing the would-be genocidals by force in the areas of the city that have been taken by the dustpeople, while the bloody battle raged on. Perhaps such people would realize they weren't the monsters they were told they were. After all, considering the fact they were openly commiting atrocities against them, they still were very merciful to not take revenge, slaughtering and torturing the biologicals for it, except for the greatest scums who were involved in gang rape and other equally heinous atrocities, who paid a steep price for what they did, many becoming "avant-garde furniture" for the more mentally challenged and "ethically flexible" of the dustpeople, who weren't as merciful as Aune to put a bullet to end the misery, believing such scum deserved such terrible fate. Regardless, most of them were very merciful and never targeted small timers and mostly innocent biologicals.

Or at least most of them didn't.

[Solar Communes]

That night, there was a quietness over the street, it wasn't like the typical night of Noveau Paris, at least in the areas under their control. The people were likely too afraid, or perhaps staging a resistance to support the organics, for they still believed in the claims that the dustpeople were heartless monsters that had to be exterminated. On the other hand, the dustpeople were too tense go out casually at the night, there was an air of hostility, for it was known that sooner or later something bad would happen, and then, they would have to choose between slaughter of civilians and retreat.

The car finally parked near Aune's apartment, after a safe travel, through which the marks of the conflict could be noticed. Distant smokes from fires that covered the regions of the city where the fighting was ocurring, and the distance sounds of a massive battle, with the occasional aircraft flying right above them, signaling a battle that never stopped, for unlike humans, machines of war didn't need to rest, or were hampered by the darkness of night. The woman got out of the car first, with Hernán coming right after, when he nodded to her. She knew what he was asking for.

Aune approached the door, her mere presence and thought being enough for it to unlock itself and open, revealing her quaint apartmentt. There were no obvious signs of disrepair, for the robots apparently kept it well cleaned during her absence. The lights automatically turned on when they arrived. Everything was in place, orderly and there were no signs of disturbance.

"Welcome to my home, Hernán." she said with a bit of strangeness, looking around the place and not being able to remember seeing it before.

"Thank you Aune, so," he looked at the decoration, very solidly inspired by colonial France, "interesting style, but I think we have more important matters to attend to than having you to introduce me to your house."

"Yes, but where do you expect to find any clues? I don't think whoever took me away would really make things that easy."

"I presume you were sleeping when you were abducted, correct?"

"Can't remember Hernán, but... what relevance does it have?"

Hernán simply took the way upstairs to her bedroom, opening the long undisturbed door. The place was equally orderly, with nothing out of place, for apparently the robots did a truly good job in her absence. There was, unexpectedly, a double bedroom. Seeing her behind, he then asked:

"Did you have a friend?"

"I don't remember..." Aune sighed, "I can barely remember anything."

"I am sorry, I forgot such detail. But," he began to scan the room, "I hope you don't mind if I check your personal belongings."

"I know the importance of this, go right ahead," Aune answered, still unsure about what exactly were her personal belongings.

The search for clues began, drawers were pulled, closet doors were opened, both of them scrounged the entire bedroom for anything out of normality, for anything that could provide hints. It was a long search, where every detail, every corner was inspected. Hernán became frustrated after many minutes passed, and having found nothing, he sighed.

"Maybe this is a dead end... maybe, we will be forced to take drastic measures to ensure our survival."

"Wait!" Aune began to pull the mattress from her wooden bed, "we didn't search below it yet."

"I find it very unlikely..." he suddenly stopped as he looked at the wooden frame that was covered by the mattress. Aune, still concentrated at dragging the mattress off, immediatelly asked:

"What did you see?"

"Aune, this is really strange. There is some sort of occult symbol drawn over the wooden frame of your bed," he reached for the frame, grabbing a piece of paper from it, as Aune could notice, "and this... it is a map of Earth, it has a red dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but there is nothing of relevance at such coordinates according to the historical database I consulted."

"Isn't there an underwater city in the south coast? Marseille I think."

"Yes, maybe... that is ironic Aune," Hernán began to ponder deeply, "my people have been so entangled with the exploration of outer space that we forgot to explore our own homeworld and uncover all its secrets," Aune noticed as he pointed towards a strange engraved symbol on the wooden frame of her bed.

"Do you know what this is?"

"That is the worst about it Aune," Hernán sighed, "you see, if it was a pentagram, it would be less difficult to determine what conclusions to take, but this symbol, I can't really find any reference about it. It is a truly occult symbol, something which intent and meaning we can only guess upon. Now, there is another problem, this map is most obviously referring to our own Earth in that lost universe, and as you know, there is no way to reach it."

"But the business card, it..."

"Yes, Aune, that is a very important thing for you to have noticed, but it still puts us in a conundrum," Hernán finally sat down on a sofa that Aune strangely had in her spacious bedroom, which she promptly followed, for they still felt tiredness, "because we have no idea of how this Doctor Julius managed to travel from and back to the home universe. And there is no clue here. I checked everything, your closet, your drawers..."

"Wait!" Aune began to feel something, an intuitive feeling. She simply had sensation that the key could be very close, "the way is very near, I can feel it, there is, I think, it is still active, a portal right here."

"What? Impossible! If a portal was opened inside your house, the anomaly would have been detected by now."

Aune simply ignored him, grabbing a pencil from a drawer, and moving to the bathroom. She stared at her reflection from the mirror. It was perfect, normal. There was nothing wrong. She then threw the pencil against the mirror, as it flew away!"

"Aune, are you kidding? Do you really believe that your bathroom's mirror is a portal to another universe?" Hernán shook his head, "come, maybe we should try searching for more clues in other areas of your house."

"Go and search them, I'll stay here!" Aune stubbornly answered. She then went back to the bedroom, and stared at the strange symbol. Aune then issued a mental command, answered immediately by the nearest robot as it plucked the wooden piece with the symbol out of her bed, drew a copy of the symbol in a blank paper and handled it to her. It was her feeling guiding her, the skill of her ancestors to sense things beyond normality. There was however one last test to confirm her suspicions.

Aune threw the wooden piece against her bathroom mirror, and instead of bouncing back, it passed through the mirror, as if crossing the boundary to another realm.

"Hernán! I found it! I found it!"

Aune took of her shirt and grabbed a razor blade, and awaited for him to return. He came, tired, frustrated, having found no other clues besides the map. Hernán simply gasped, not believing in what the woman was doing.

"Don't!"

She didn't listen, only wincing as a robot began to scar the symbol over her back. It took some time, and she seemed to be in pain, but when it was finally over, she sighed of relief, wearing her shirt back, and looked at the shocked face of Hernán.

"It had to be done, this is like a code I think... this portal will only let anything with this symbol inscribed in, I don't think there is something more difficult to detect. Now... I want to know the end of this, you wanted it too, Hernán, I hope you are ready to do this as well."

"I... damn it, let me start with the map," Hernán used the blade himself to draw the symbol over the world map they found as a clue. As soon as he finished it, however, something happened. A small sheet slid off the map, which had some interesting engravings like those of old circuits and computer microchips.

"This... I never saw this, wait..." Hernán shook his head, "it is a portable file storage that only some obsolete computers that only exist in Earth could access... it seems obvious now what we must do, but first... I think we should of course seek the nearest civilized land to that marked point," he took a very deep sigh then, pondering, "if there is any left, for perhaps something really bad could have happened to the home universe during these decades of isolation, something worse than the Fall of Sheol perhaps," he shuddered, remembering of the dark tales his father told about that now destroyed planet.

"We have to try, I'd rather take this risk to myself than to be forced to exterminate billions for survival..."

"Ahem, where is that 'one Eldar life is worth a million human lives' bull?"

"Hernán, I am no longer eldar, and you are no longer human, and yes..." Aune nodded with a bit of shame, "it was a hogwash. But anyway, are you coming or not?"

"Yes... argh!" he screamed when what he was going to speak was interrupted as a robot began to scar him with the symbol. He grimaced, but tried to not scream or cry. When it was finally over, Hernán then looked at Aune and answered:

"Hold my hand, Aune, we are going together wherever this portal leads."

She grabbed his hand firmly, as she took the first step, her face easily trespassing the otherwise solid surface of the mirror, as she saw a strange, eerie beacon amidst darkness, and began to feel dragged towards the light. Then she floated through such strange gateway, finally seeing the blinding light to her senses, with Hernán still holding her hand, as they arrived at the unknown destination such portal led to.

[Solar Communes]

"Where are we?" Aune asked when they finally stepped over the stony ground. It was so dark that their sights became resonant, seeing a wireframe display of reality. It was a large cave, with a small pond of water just behind them, likely the location of the portal back to Aune's home. There were two tunnels to the left and to the right, and no sign of the surface, or hints that any of them was leading to it.

"There is no clue, wait one moment, I'm turning the flashlight, maybe there is something on the floor," he switched his vision back to normal as light beams came from his eyes while he looked down. The slippery rock was nearly black, and it was clean, with nothing under the ground. Seeing the place under conventional means made its truly exotic appearance become clear. The cavern was entirely made of a strange black rock unlike anything ever seen on Earth. Also, its dimensions were collossal, with its roof hanging hundreds of feet above their heads, and stalagmites that sometimes seemed to be as tall as a five-store building. There were however, no clues like footprints that could guide them to where to head to.

"Aune? This cave doesn't look like anything I gathered from the museum of Earth," Hernán answered her, his voice being the only sound, for there was a strange silence permeating the place, no noise of anything amidst the total darkness, besides of the footsteps they began to take through the center of such place, still unsure on which way to take.

"I don't really know," she turned to the left, and began to walk towards the left passageway.

"Aune? Wait? Are you sure we should go to that place?"

"We have no clue, use the automap." Aune answered him, "whether you want to try elsewhere or go with me, it is your choice."

"Oh yes, the automap," Hernán nodded, as he still followed her, "at least we will know how to avoid going around in circles. So, what do you think?"

"I don't have any idea, Hernán, it makes no sense for my house to be linked to this place."

They turned the gradual curve that the cave took towards the right, and noticed as the ground began to slope upwards, which was a good sign. It meant they would eventually reach the surface, logically, unless the cave deceptively went down again. Fortunately they had the 'automap', a software connected to their minds and bodies that kept track of altitude and distance, drawing a map in their minds of everything they passed through. However, the dimensions of the place seemed to be on the edge of defying physics, unless such place was deeply underground or made of some sort of material that was unknown for the rest of this world and could support such a massive place without making it collapse. Then, there was also another obvious doubt, while they continued to walk.

"Maybe this isn't even Earth, Aune, we have no clue yet to where we are."

"Yes, I've seen some photos of your planet, this really doesn't look like anything in it. We need to reach the surface to be sure, though..." she had a shiver on her spine, feeling that something was wrong, "we should find a way out of here soon, and if we find anything different, we better just keep a note of it and ignore it for now, we better go straight in our search for a path to the surface, I just feel it. There is something!"

"Calm down Aune!" Hernán grabbed her arm, "I know, maybe you are right, I think you have the gift."

"Gift? What do you mean?"

"Extra-sensory perception, like a sixth sense to know danger before it happens."

"Maybe," Aune shook her head, as she continued to advance through the network of such massive cave. They finally reached another particularly featureless area with different paths to take, but there was a feeling. Hernán sensed it, Aune sensed it, it was a feeling that across the darkness, there was something, but every time they switched to magnetic resonance to check, they couldn't see anything. However, they felt that something was there, watching them.

"Now I see things got more complicated," Hernán said to her, "from those six tunnels, which way do you think we should follow?"

"I don't," Aune began to look at the passageways, as far as they could be seen before curves made it impossible to see what was ahead in each, she tried to conclude something, but they were too homogeneous, "I think this again will be a random choice. I pick," Aune then pointed the the second to the right, "that one." she then heard a whisper, a tiny, nearly imperceptible whisper echoing what she just said. The stale cavern had no winds as well, that could hint the right way.

"Did you hear the whisper?"

"Whisper? What whisper?"

"Like an echo, but a whispered echo of what I spoke after pointing to that direction. I don't really..." Aune shuddered, "maybe we should try another way, but all ways," she suddenly felt a terrible dread, sensations mixing in a confused pattern inside her consciousness. She knew that such was the only way, but there was something wrong about going through that way. Aune then sighed deeply, and putting her hand over his shoulder, said:

"Hernán, we will have a risk of dying if we go through that way I indicated, but I have a very bad feeling about the other ways," she then embraced him in a friendly manner, in a way like if she was bidding him farewell, "thank you for all you have done for me, if not for you, I don't want to even think," Aune then released him again, accidentally grabbing his map and Hernán suddenly frowned:

"Why are you looking at me as if I am a dead person? There is no fate, this is bullshit!"

"Hernán, one of us is going to die today, I am unsure about whom, so," she sighed, "if you have any further advice to give me, now is a good time."

"All right! All right!" Hernán said, seemingly not pleased with her prophetic words," this is my advice: assume an human form, better now, actually, because we are, at least I think, safe."

"Very well, I will take fifteen minutes, will you wait?"

"Of course, Aune, I won't leave you alone here."

And thus, Aune began to concentrate, she remembered it. It was a funny sensation, it took some time as her very flesh began to shift, her muscles, her bones and even some of the atrophied internal organs inside her body. Hernán avoided looking at her during the transformation, as he knew it wasn't a particularly pleasant sight. The time passed, and the only thing to happen in the cave was the silence and the continuous sensation that no matter how all their advanced means of seeing through darkness indicated nothing else was there, something was watching them.

"I am finished," Aune answered as he looked back at her. She seemingly copied her new face from a book of photos of Scandinavian models, changing into a tall, blonde woman with light blue eyes and a gorgeous body.

"Why not a less perfect, average person look? I never imagined you were that narcissistic." Hernán, trying to lighten the mood, said.

"Yes? What the matter? We are lost in the middle of a massive underground cavern, I have a feeling we will be very close to death and you want to ask me such about an irrelevant detail?" Aune shrugged, ruining his poor attempt at humor.

"Nevermind, so, should we really go through that way?"

"Yes, we have a chance of surviving if we go through it, but I feel that we take any other path, we will definitively die." Aune began to follow the tunnel she mentioned, and not wanting to stop her, he soon catched up with her, as he looked at her and asked:

"Could you allow for me to take the lead?"

"As you wish." Aune answered him, although there was a look of pity at her face, to which he shunned, but didn't comment.

Aune felt terrible from having allowed him to take the lead as they walked through the immense tunnels of such cave, feeling a sense of guilty for something that didn't happen yet. Still featureless, still without anything that could be considered strange other than their alien ambience. Twenty minutes have passed as fortunately, no more choices between a maze of ways appeared along.

Then, after such long travel, which so far seemed to be going up on overall they noticed as the ceiling seemed to finally be gradually approaching the ground while the walls seemed to become closer to them, as the size of the cave diminished further ahead. The words of Aune were no longer so fresh in his memory, but the strangeness of seeing a cave which interior seemed to follow the shape of an irregular funnel truly made him wonder.

"This doesn't look like something that would be formed naturally," Hernán said, "and this is puzzling, really, why would anything built such a cave?"

"Maybe whatever was used to dig it began to get stuck at this point, and could no longer make a hole as big as the rest of the cave." Aune suggested to Hernán, as she also observed such interesting detail. The emptiness and silent continued as they made their way through the slope. Eventually, the ceiling stopped to lower, and the slope ended. Then, ahead the now smaller cave became split into several chambers, that were interconnected, with formations making large, irregular pillar-like structures, which made seeing what lied ahead, past a couple of meters, impossible. The way such pillars were formed gave the slight impression they were crossing through the gaps amidst the many jaws of something, for some of such formations were strangely jagged and sharp.

Aune began to feel a terrible headache while her entire body shivered. She pretended everything was allright and continued to follow him as he navigated through the rough soil amidst such formations, avoiding many dead ends that existed.

"When is this going to be over?" Aune thought amidst her fear, amidst her aching head. She felt a certain pain, the uncomfortable clothes she wore, as they weren't tailored for a human body, didn't help either, and the sensation something was watching them became even more intense, she began them to hear something, like.

"Shh." Aune whispered, "I can hear something," she began to focus on the strange sound, while Hernán simply couldn't get it, not being able to hear it, "it sounds like, it is weird, I am trying to remember something to compare with this," her face suddenly became horrified, "It is like the sound of handling shredded meat, like if there was lots of flesh or something shifting."

"I don't like this Aune, I can't hear it. We should hurry. Come with me, quick!" after he said it, suddenly a haunting tune echoed across the cave, like that of random keys being pressed in a pipe organ, only with a completely alien countenance, timbre and nature that made even bones of those listening shiver. "We have to go now!" Hernán whispered as he began to sprint through the cave. Aune quickly tried to follow him, and thus they began to move as fast as they could. The chase proceeded, but amidst the structures, Aune suddenly lost pace as she tripped in a small rock on the ground and fell over it. Trying to get up, she suddenly gasped as she heard his voice:

"Oh my..." his screams echoed through the cave, until they were silenced. Aune felt a terrible guilt, she felt that, by allowing him to take the lead, she has condemned him to die, for she could feel that this was going to happen, but only not understand how exactly it would. Quickly, she raised, and looking at another hollow amidst the formations, she began to run, as the sound of shifting flesh seemed to get closer. She was under intense terror, and ran, navigating through the labyrinth. It was coming, it was getting closer.

She saw it... but it was too quick, it was on one of the passageways to the side while she ran. She could barely keep notice of what was it, and didn't bother wasting time to direct her lights onto it. Whatever it was, she didn't look behind, but she felt something very heavy shooking the cave as it seemingly impacted with the wall right behind her. It was going after her. Aune ran, she knew that whatever it was, she couldn't really fight against it. It was chasing her, she could hear the sound of a mooving ooze behind her. Finally, she got past those jagged formations, lowering her torso to run faster. She felt a slimy thing slashing right above her head, and something touching her hair, something vile and disgusting. Aune winced as she felt her hair being torn apart as apparently such thing grabbed some of her hairs with it, and became even more tense. There was an upwards slope, making running more difficult. It was closing on her, its limbs trying to hit her, its haunting sounds seemingly inducing her to madness. But she resisted.

Then Aune just felt as all air was thrown out of her lungs and something big and soft bashed against her back, giving a sharp pain as she heard the sounds of broken bones, and she saw herself flying quickly ahead of the cave, as she collided one her left side with the rocky floor, and felt as her left arm was completely crushed into nothing.

Aune grimaced. She tried to resist the pain as she attempted to get up, hearing the horror approaching her. She breathed very quickly, purely of fear, while hearing its approach drove her to struggle against it. Her bruised legs stood up, and she move her torso up, clenching her teeth as she felt and listened to the sounds of her ribs cracking. She began to run again, fighting against the pain, the fear, the terrible head ache and the way reality seemed to become more distant from her mind, while it continued to try taking her down. She felt again one of its limbs coming very close to hit her like it did before, but this time it didn't.

She was losing hope, she felt that they had only a small chance to survive, and Hernán was already consumed by whatever such thing after her was, something she couldn't stop to check. Then, after a particularly sharp slope, the ground became more plain, and she finally saw some light at the end of such cavern. She ran, struggling, but with regained hope. Also, the place seemed to become colder, but the coldness was only another feeling amidst so many. There was a terrible pain, and her blistered arm ached terribly. Aune ran faster than before, seeing the light, the exit from that horrible place ahead.

Then it was over, as she heard a terrible dark tune again, one that perhaps was of frustration than of anything else, but too alien to attempt understanding. Whatever pursued her gave up as she finally saw what lied on the outside. It was a frozen place, with ice covering part the most closest areas of the cave with the surface, and snow flakes falling. Aune began to step over the snow, exhausted and in pain, feeling the urge to fall unconscious so her body could be healed, she began to loot around for any shelter besides the cave... as she struggled to remain conscious. Then suddenly, she fell over the snow as the ground shook, and turning on her back, Aune looked again to the dreaded cavern.

"How..." she moaned, looking as the cavern simply vanished, and only a vastness of icy plains and hills lied ahead of her, it was like if such cave has sunk beneath the ground and the ice, and she knew she wouldn't be able to return through such way. There was a dread, a fear that something would kill her if she allowed herself to lose consciousness. She fought hard to not sleep, while her body began to froze, numbing her pain. Her mind began to waver, her eyes began to close, when she whispered another word, before finally falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

"Antarctica", Aune whispered, unknowingly guessing where she was, before falling into a state of complete helplessness.

[Solar Communes]

The pain was over. Opening her eyes, Aune saw the white ceiling of a hospital, as she quickly rose from a pod-like structure. The place had other pods, but they were completely empty. There was nobody there, only a single medical robot next to her. She noticed that someone or something clothed her with something more fitting to her new shape, and felt strange about it, considering it was a long blue dress, something totally obsolete and retro. She opened the door out of such room, and wondered about who to talk with. There was much to tell and much to ask about.

Moving through the corridors, she noticed the snow flakes falling as she looked at the windows, merged into the frame of the wall rather than molded and bolted in it. Apparently she was still at the frozen continent. She took a mental note of it and headed to the elevator. As it came down, and its doors opened, Aune saw a man right ahead, already expecting her. He was an average man with a short brown hair and amber eyes, dressed in white, as a doctor would be.

"Greetings," he seemed cheerful and curious, "you may not know, but you are the first patient in Izville general hospital. And particularly interesting how you were found lady, we are really glad to have managed to save your life despite the gravity of your condition."

"We?" Aune questioned him.

"I am sorry, I am just too enthusiastic, I mean myself, for as you may have noticed, I am the only person working here. Everything has been automated, so I just oversee and manage things in case of a very rare error occurring in one of the robots, I am doctor Johansen, nice to meet you."

"Aune," she returned his handshake, "and before anything, could you answer me in which planet, and which continent we are, please?"

"What? Having problems with memory Aune?" the doctor seemed surprised about her question, "come in, we shouldn't stand here, there are many comfortable seats in the waiting room," he laughed, "as if there was the need of waiting, but we built it just for nostalgia, I suppose." he quickly moved towards one of the rows of large power seats, and awaited. Aune immediately took a seat next to him. When she sat next to him he immediately answered:

"We are in Antarctica, Earth, of course."

Aune finally realized her thoughts were real. The Great Isolation was no longer a fact. There was a connection, after all, between the home universe and the universe where most of Solarian "allies" resided. However, still in doubt, she made another question to be sure.

"Who is in charge of Earth?"

"Oh well, you really have a memory problem," Johansen laughed, "don't you remember Aune, there has been no government in this universe since the year five thousand."

"Ah, I had some trouble." she smiled, trying to let his cheerfulness influence her mood, "but it seems I am where I thought I would be."

"Yes, real trouble. Your left arm bones were pulverized, you were almost dying of hypothermia and eighty percent of your ribcage was fractured."

"Now, how did you find me?"

"Aune, you sent a distress signal before you lost consciousness, or otherwise we wouldn't have found you in time to save your life."

"No, I didn't," she shook her head.

"Then your body automatically sent it, you see, it is a failsafe, some of us automatically transmit a distress signal when we are on the verge of death."

"I didn't know that, thanks."

"You're welcome, now, I believe this belongs to you," he handled her the map with that marked spot in the middle of the South Pacific, "curious, isn't it? Do you know what exactly that dot points to?"

"No, but I am trying to find out, I have certain business to settle."

"How? Business? What do you mean Aune?" the doctor suddenly went into a not so happy mood, "the last registered crime in Earth was a five years old stealing another five years old bike, and that was fifty years ago! How could you have justice to settle? I can't understand."

"Do you know a man named Julius Lovecraft?" Aune went straight to the point.

"Julius? Oh yes," he answered, seeming even more confused, "but Julius is harmless, and in fact, now that you mentioned it, I think I should start from the beggining, Aune, it is a long history."

"What?"

"Aune, Julius is an old researcher of interdimensional mechanics, a very famous one, considering how old he is, but something really strange happened. Five years ago, he contacted the scientific community claiming he found the universal principle of the multiverse, and called everyone to meet him at the only hotel in this city, the Silver Mudkip Suites."

"Silver Mudkip? What is that?"

"Old Internet Meme, so," Johansen paused a bit, "Julius said that the next day he would be at the conference room of the hotel to tell anybody interested his conclusions. He was a bit eccentric, didn't like teleconferences, always preferred a face to face meeting."

"He never showed up," Aune guessed, for it was quite obvious.

"Yes, and not only that Aune, he vanished, disappeared from this planet. Since that day nobody ever saw any sign of him, anywhere." the doctor gestured with his hands, "poof, it was like if he never existed, actually."

"How?"

"All registers, all transactions, photographs, any object that referred to him simply disappeared, and although several searches were made, eventually everybody gave up, and we don't really know where he is, what happened to him, and anything else," he looked straight at her eyes, "which leads to the interesting facts about you. First, you hinted that Julius did something bad to you, and I presume you mean he did that not more than five years ago. Second, you just came out of nowhere, appearing in the middle of Antarctica, your face is nowhere to be found in any Net database, your biometrics don't match those of anyone born in the last three thousand years. And Third, I have collected some interesting tissues from your wounds."

[Solar Communes]

"Tissues?" Aune shrugged, "what are you talking about?"

"I mean, your cells are perfectly human, your DNA is flawless, even though... I noticed a peculiarity about you, but we will talk about it later," he nodded, "this is more intriguing than yourself. It is not like anything I ever seen, and it was still... alive when I examined it, although now it is dead. Do you mind if I hook up your senses into the recordings?"

"No problem," Aune nodded. Suddenly her sight was replaced by that of seeing through a microscope lens. She saw the cells, they were fibrous, their basic shapes ever shifting, and microscopic tentacle-like appendages sometimes emerged out of them. They were, for one who had some basic knowledge of biology, completely alien.

"Do you see now?" he asked, as he looked at her and tried to comfort her, "look Aune, I think that those cells belonged to something that attacked you, and whatever it was, from the way it crushed your bones, it must have been really powerful, and I theorize, from the behavior of its dying cells, that such thing, whatever it was, could shapeshift at ease," he made an obnoxious look at her when he mentioned it, before turning back to normal, "I swear Aune, you can trust me. If this was an alien, you have no idea of how critical it is. We cannot let our home world be inhabited by anything that could threaten our survival Aune, and from the way your tissues and bones were shattered, I am dead sure that whatever attacked you is a threat to our survival."

"I..." Aune tried to suppress her fear, her sorrows, as she began to tell him, "I came from a planet settled by the Solarians who were cut off, on the other side."

"What? Are you serious?"

"Yes, doctor, I am telling you the truth. I found a portal that led me from the other universe to this universe, and I was with a friend of mine, Hernán."

"Where is..." he then looked down, "sorry, I should have guessed."

"The," Aune skin crawled from merely remembering it, "the thing that attacked me, my friend didn't survive," she then looked at him, frightened, "it was, a massive cave, the portal I took to this world brought me to a massive cave, unlike any, where all rocks where black, and there were several corridors, I," she stuttered, "I could feel the way to surface, and I followed my, my intuition."

"So you are psychic Aune. And what about this cave? We saw no cave anywhere nearby when the bots came to rescue you?"

"I think its entrance, I was already losing consciousness when the ground shook," Aune tried to remember, "and it was like if the earth was swallowing the cave deep into the mountain."

"So this means the portal you came through is no longer accessible, correct?"

"Yes," Aune looked at him, "but maybe, maybe there are other portals, and the Great Isolation, it could be about to end, couldn't it?"

"Nobody knows Aune, nobody knows the secrets of the Multiverse, and perhaps it is for the best."

"I see, but... I need to investigate those coordinates."

"Alone? I wouldn't advise it. Now Aune, mind if I ask you a question?"

"Which question?" she began to feel that he knew it.

[Solar Communes]

"What the hell are you? You have human cells, human DNA, but I know you are not really human, that this is just a shell for whatever you truly are. Because if you were human, no matter how many augmentations you had, you would never have survived this and besides, I noticed how your regeneration happened, and the fact you have no blood running in your veins and that all your organs, including your brain, have atrophied, truly intrigues me."

Aune became desperate, she looked at him, with tears beginning to fall from her eyes, she was afraid, not of the doctor, but of what she could do against him in her defense if he tried to kill her.

"Don't try to kill me, please. I don't want to hurt anybody, but," she screamed as a memory suddenly surfaced in her thoughts, "he tried to kill me! I had no choice, I couldn't stop it! I..."

"Hey! Calm down! Iam sorry Aune," the doctor said, touching her shoulder in a comfortable way, "I didn't want to upset you, I can see it in your eyes, you weren't born like this, I presume."

"Yes," she seemed deeply relieved from knowing he wasn't there to kill her, "I had no choice in the events that made me like this."

"Care to explain?"

"It was him, Julius!" Aune said angrily, "he made me into this, against my will, he abducted me and brought me to his lab, then," she sighed, "I can't remember how exactly it happened, all I know is that somehow, he managed to transfer my conscious from my brain to a set of self-replicating machines, and that is what I truly am."

"Oh, you mean like the Third Man?"

"Third Man?" Aune couldn't remember it.

"Yes, a concept about how our technology would allow for us to control our own evolution. The first men were our purely organic ancestors, the second men are like me, with organic and nanotechnological components in symbiosis in the same cell. The third would be a concept that resembles what you became," he looked at her, "holographic consciousness, completely inorganic in essence and beyond the limitations of a physical body as we know it, and potentially able to transfer the consciousness from one body to another, no longer attached to a single physical body or brain. Now," he looked carefully at Aune, "you weren't exactly human before becoming this, were you?"

"No, I was an eldar, but you aren't going to kill me because of it, I don't want to hurt you." Aune answered him.

"Oh, you are in Earth lady, the most tolerant world in the Solarian civilization, not that we would welcome having legions of aliens wanting to immigrate to here, mind you, but we don't go shooting everything that thinks because it happens to not be human, like the people in other worlds tend to, as long as they aren't vicious like whatever attacked you, of course."

"But most people like me, they were once human."

"Well, I always imagined that the third men would no longer be defined by genetics," he smiled, "ironic, considering that some of them most likely hated what you were before you became a..."

"Dustperson."

"Yes, simple but self-explaining, but what impresses me is your capability of imitating human DNA in your, shell, I presume," he looked at her and wondered, "oh hell, I am afraid that this could ensure some warm foreign relations. But nevermind, I guess whatever drove you here was in part related to the tolerance of others who weren't like you."

"Rwanda, do you know the old history? It was like it, they, average people, took whatever they had and began to kill everyone of us," Aune seemed to be in a distant but fearful mood when she told it, "they, I don't want to talk about it."

"I understand, now," the doctor eyes suddenly showed signs of surprise, "what? Impossible!"

"What are you talking about? Johansen!"

"Let met pull the old projector, I like the oldschool feeling of this place."

Suddenly, an holographic projection of what seemed to be a news channel appeared. The anchor began to announce, as behind him the title of the news appeared, very evidently.

"Two minutes ago, we have finally received the first radiation from an anomaly in space, located about two hundredths of a light year above Earth's axis of rotation. The signatures of heat and light emmissions match those of the multiversal gateway that existed in the Gliese 581 system, that after lasting for more than two thousand and eight hundred years simply disappeared, completely cutting off all Solarians who resided in other universes. The Solarian Defense Contract is already deploying most of its assets in Gliese 581 to protect Sol, and all personell from the Space Force has been readied to maximum alertness, for who knows what could lie beyond the event horizon of such anomaly? More details about this mysterious new gateway to Hell will be given as soon as investigations uncover them. We cannot confirm yet, but perhaps this might mean the end of the Great Isolation."

"This isn't good." Aune shuddered at the thought

"Why?"

"My people, they didn't simply lower their heads awaiting for the slaughter, we have been fighting back for our survival, there is a civil war happening right now in the planet I came from, and I don't think the your universe intervention will be good news."

"Care to explain?"

"Well, I believe the Solarians dismissed their hatred out of practicality, because of their very small population, and instead, they decided to allow for the eldar to be integrated in their views of society. But the prejudices, the hatred, which is, I confess, mutual," Aune explained, "it didn't end. Now, this happened and I expect the Solarians from this universe would either slaughter all nonhumans from the planet,slaughter only the eldar or slaughter others like me once they arrive."

"Why would they kill the third men? I don't think they would Aune, but I think you are right about the eldar, if your world is in such a mess."

[Solar Communes]

"There is one more thing I didn't told you, doctor," Aune seemed to be very afraid, as if expecting the worse from being honest, "I am more of a flawed prototype for your concept of third men, I don't know why and how, but I need something to survive, I need blood."

"Oh no! How didn't you even think about it?" the doctor laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

"What?"

"I 'fed' you with energy while you were under treatment Aune, you see, I think the blood thing is just an alternative source of energy for the worst case scenario of you ending in a hole without any battery or form of electricity"

"Battery? Do you mean?"

"Why didn't you think about it? Of course, you don't need blood Aune, all you need is to plug a battery into each of your fingers into other extremities of your body and wait as your body takes its energy."

"All this time..."

"I think you lost part of your ability to think outside the box. I had to try something because I realized that, you were depleted of energy, or if you prefer, starving, when you were brought here."

"I see, so, does this mean I could live normally?"

"You were not flawed by anything but not knowing that your primary source of energy is electricity, Aune, you are not the prototype."

"And solar power."

"Solar power?" the man laughed, "it is too inefficient, my dear, you have the best that could be done in the next stage of evolution for man... maybe for every biological being interested, you aren't really flawed, Aune, not at all, I know you might have been searching for a cure, for a way to change it, but why?"

"So..." suddenly she became silent, as a newswire appeared again.

"After over nine thousand million messages sent through the anomaly, contact was finally restablished with our assets in the other universe. The message has brought dread news. Apparently, Marcus Metzger, the last known bioconservative, have exploited an incident related to the wanton transfer of consciousnesses from human bodies to self-replicating nanites through a mysterious virus to call forth a genocide and seize the position of head of State from a legitimately elected president in the planet, called Eden, which is one of the first Earth-like planets colonized by the Confederation. The Solarian Defense Contract is heading towards the planet to stop the genocide, and what could be the destruction of a successful try at transcendence, for even though those who suffered from the virus no longer have human bodies, they were born human and retain their identity. In six months the first spacecrafts, the eight ACS that will be sent as part of peacekeeping forces, are predicted to arrive. More details about the conflict in this distant world will be informed as soon as more details become available."

"That pig? I am not surprised. A pity we couldn't prove he was involved in the great massacre."

"Great massacre?"

"Old history, happened in one of the inhabitable moons, a virus killed all humans with nanites in their bodies, hundreds of millions died." he sighed, "later it was discovered a fringe bioconservative group was behind it. All those sons of bitches had their way and were killed, and although most people knew it, we never found enough proof to link Marcus to this atrocity."

"But why?"

[Solar Communes]

"Aune, you are a threat to the 'pure human being' nutjobs like him flaunt about. In fact, you are the exact opposite of what he preaches that should be the pinnacle of evolution. It is no wonder why he wants all who are like you dead so hard. But now we got him red handed, trust me lady, he is going to pay for the great massacre, and for what he is doing in your world."

"So does this mean it is going to be over?"

"Well, I presume Marcus managed to convince lots of people to further his agenda in their naivety. Probably invented some big lie about what you are to scaremonger everyone. It will take a time before things get to normal, and it is going to be nasty, so, I suggest you try to make yourself at home. If you don't like the cold, well," he smiled, "this world has places for all tastes."

Aune knew that the most critical reason to investigate this was lost, that finally, it would be over. She never imagined that the man behind all of this was deeply hated by most of the Solarians in the home universe. But there was still an urge to find answers. To discover who was the doctor who did it.

"I still want to find Julius." Aune suddenly interrupted him.

"Very well, I see you are really willing to take the risks. I advise you however, to not go alone."

"But who would want to go with me?"

"Here?" Johansen laughed, "people give too much worth to their immortal lives to risk them, but if you can't find it, import it," he smiled, "and I am sure you could, now that the great isolation is over."

"But I don't have any money to hire mercenaries."

"I have Aune, and I have a deep scientific curiousity in what you discovered so far. It is disturbing, but I want to know it. I will fund any expedition you start about this matter. Besides, if the doctor really uncovered the secrets of the multiverse, this could lead to a leap unlike any other in our history. Our scientific community has been a bit stale, you have no idea of how eager people were for this theory Julius claimed to have."

"Thanks, but," Aune wondered, "is that your only reason?"

"After you trusted me to share secrets you feared that could get you killed, telling you everything is the least I can do," he smiled, "so yes, I have another reason, do you know what the Invisible Network means?"

"No."

"It was an old secret society, it was dismantled after the formation of Solar Communes and its last members got out of secrecy to make a last stand against the Global State in Earth, as I understand. Their goal was essentially to conspire against governments and for anarchy, although they were known for resorting to less-than-ethical means to achieve such end. There is lots of declassified information about them, but some information was lost forever in the war."

"And?" Aune wondered what such fact had to do with everything.

"I stumbled into some mostly corrupted files, and from what could be salvaged, they were about a secret excavation site which description is very close to that of the cave you claim to have arrived from. The file was terribly damaged, but one word truly caught my attention from what was still intact: reverse-engineering."

"What?"

"I think it explains how we managed to build interstellar torchships so earlier, it is obvious, the Network was reverse-engineering alien technology that was found in those ruins."

"I see, but there was nothing in those caves besides rock and, you know what."

"Aune, you said that you were looking for an exit, not for anything that could be different, I don't think you would have found anything this way. But I think they are related. Also, I found some files that also refer to reverse-engineering, but they are even more interesting."

"What about them?"

[Solar Communes]

"You see Aune, apparently there was a black project involving an attempt to reverse-engineer a method of transforming human beings into something else, more evolved. From what I could gather, the condition was initially flawed, but they found that it could be perfected into a Post-human being. The document is a bit broken, but there are several references to a person named Roseann Line. And it was very... similar to your condition," he shrugged, "except that this person apparently couldn't use electricity as a source of energy, and neither had nanite solar collectors in her skin, like you. And now it is obvious enough."

"What?"

"I saw your teeth, they are completely normal, but I still think that..." he suddenly felt ridiculous, and was ridiculous in his gestures, almost laughing at his own words, "yes, you are going to laugh at this or think I am crazy, but I think that you were built out of reverse-engineering a vampired."

"What?" Aune couldn't take it serious.

"Look, I know it sounds totally stupid, but maybe, maybe the myth is real, but today we know that many things we can do now would be considered supernatural if we could travel back to the twentieth century."

"So, what is your theory that would explain the existence of beings which require a technology millennia ahead of time created?"

"Well, I don't really have a theory that wouldn't fall under the realm of the silliest conspiracy theories. Specially silly because after all these years, after we became a spacefaring civilization, we still didn't make contact with any spacefaring alien in this universe, so far."

"Are you suggesting that aliens did it? Why?"

"Yes, that would be a plausible theory if not for the fact our only first contact in this universe was with a non spacefaring species that we had to exterminate for our own survival. Now on why, well, it is feasible to program nanites to self-destruct with the trigger being sunlight, but why would anything do something like that? It sounds cruel."

"A curse?"

"I don't think so, the matter is mind-boggling actually." he laughed, "unless you think all human religions were derived from contact of humans with more advanced alien civilizations that they thought that were gods, of course."

"And if I do?"

"Then we can easily guesswork the old myth of Cain and Abel. Cain pissed off an alien that could engineer a 'curse' by transferring Cain consciousness into a set of nanites programmed to burst if they were hit by sunlight and that could only be powered by blood, and then he spreaded the 'curse' by feeding , the 'vampires' probably formed a sort of Freemasonry-esque organization to not be discovered and so. But I think that is ridiculous."

"Yes, it is ridiculous." Aune agreed, "now, how do you suggest I hire mercenaries?"

"Not in this universe, for sure. Well, I can take you to a spacecraft, right next to the anomaly so you can catch up with anyone interested to help you, for a price."

"And what about the xenophobes?"

"This is Sol Aune!" Johansen explained, "the greatest enemy we fought against here was what I would call the dark side of humanity, so we happen to be a bit more tolerant than Gliese 581, as I told you. Don't expect them to be treated warmly if you happen to get some alien mercenaries, but nobody here is going to shoot aliens on sight as long as they don't start a mess and behave violently. And as long as they don't want to stubbornly migrate to here. We don't want aliens trying to immigrate to our planets."

"I see. So, is that it?"

"Yes, I have a shuttle in the spaceport ready to go, if you want."

"Yes, I want to get to the end of this, Johansen."

Thus, a tragic tale of genocide would end, and a new one would begin.

And with strange aeons even death may die...