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Legacy
Posted By: Bronzemage<mrbronzer@hotmail.com>
Date: 11 July 2005, 12:25 pm
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It was said, long ago, that what one alone could not achieve, many could. This was the true reason we had lasted so long, and the reason for our downfall. We shared everything, our homes, our food, and our thoughts. If one dwelling was bigger than another, we did not fight about it, it was simply so, because the occupants needed it. If one family got more food than another, it was because they had more offspring.
The concepts of trade and war were as alien to us as the species we encountered as we grew. Small, occupied villages turned into cities, then countries and finally planets. There was no competition between us, no anger, pain or suffering. We observed other species over time, and learned these things. Still we did not show them. We simply could not. There was always something holding us back. No-one stole, murdered or lied, it was unthinkable. We were a race that lived, and existed. We advanced and grew, but all our efforts were focused on keeping us alive as one, a whole.
As we watched other races and species, even on our own worlds, we saw something strange. They ate, maimed and killed each other, not just for food but for competition. If they were on their land, they did not simply lie back and leave them in peace, they attacked them, sometimes spending their own lives in the process. As we advanced, we saw intolerable acts inflicted on other races by their fellows. Wars, murders, massacres. We saw this, and saw that they advanced; they grew as a result of their struggle. While we stayed back, continuing to quietly watch and take note, these races grew and spread to the entire galaxy.
Perplexed by our refusal as a species to adopt the values shown by these other civilisations, greed, anger, corruption, our scientists turned to the very things that made up our lives. They compared our genes to those left from other races and were shocked. Through all our existence, we had lived communally, sharing everything in order to advance us as a civilisation. There was no question of this, for it was ingrained in our very existence. This was what the scientists had found, and this was what worried them. For the need to survive was rooted in us as a whole. There was no single entity, we lived as one. Thus, any action hurting the whole would hurt everyone. Anyone who hurt or killed another would be hurt themselves. We knew this, and that was why there was no killings, no fighting, and no wars.
We were perfect. It was not an idle boast, or a vain muttering. It was a fact. Everything we did, we did with mechanical efficiency. Structures and entire planets were created and made with barely an atom's diameter between opposite edges. We had no wars, no infighting; we accepted things the way they were. If someone was faster then you, for example, you did not attempt to beat him by challenging him, for it would have endangered yourself, and, in turn, the species. It just was.
Indeed, it was this "perfection" that lead to the creation of the Flood. We attempted to understand the reason why we were so different and apart from all the other races that occupied our galaxy. Daily, our ships observed them, never showing themselves or fighting with the intruders. Our technology allowed us to remain unseen, for our sake as well as theirs. They needn't have worried. We were far less an enemy than the Flood ever was.
In splicing our DNA and genes, the scientists found something. Our need to survive, the refusal to accept pain, suffering or greed, the quiet peace and the way we worked together to achieve our goals, all this combined to make us the perfect race. We did not know it then but it was this that led us down. We attempted to create this life in other species. The scientists working on it, separated from the rest of us and deprived of this community, begun to show signs of adopting those qualities we thought were impossible. They had pride, greed, curiosity. They had begun to take risks, endangering us as a race as a result of their actions. They spliced our DNA into microscopic bacteria, but something was changed. One of the scientists, desperate in his need to understand, his greed for knowledge, had changed a vital piece of the structure.
The Flood, as we called ot in those eary days, was the same as us. Perfect. It retained our communication skills, our telepathy, and our desire to survive. It had one main difference, though; it was not content with simply observing life and the passing of time as we were. The communal aspect of their psychology was still there. They shared their knowledge, their weapons and their thoughts.
The desire for knowledge from that one scientist had been passed on to the Flood, and, undergoing a period of rapid evolution in the laboratory, it attacked us, frantic in its need to acquire information and expansion. The small, spidery form that this one bacterium had become quickly absorbed the helpless scientists like a virus, creating more forms of itself and multiplying over the entire base. The Flood learned at an astonishing rate. Its level of communication went even beyond ours, another product of the splicing. While we had used speech, telepathy and even physical gestures to communicate, the Flood went far in excess of that. They were literally one mind. Everything was co-ordinated, shared in an instant. What one knew, they all did. This allowed them to quickly learn to use our ships and they departed, eager for more hosts and the ever-strong need for knowledge.
This outbreak of the Flood generated one new emotion we had never felt before. Fear. In the wake the attack on the base, the new emotions and feelings we had never felt before begun to creep in. Anger at the scientists, at ourselves, for being so reckless. Hate, towards these xenoformic, parasitical creatures that were on the way to our colonies. Fear, for the entire galaxy. We knew we could not beat the Flood. Nothing can. They are the perfect species, the combat representation of ourselves. They will continue to multiply, supremely efficient. Nothing can and ever will stop them.
Despite the scientists' warnings and advice, we decided as a race to try to combat the Flood. Before, it would have been unthinkable to manufacture weapons or armour. Now, it was reality. We were, for the first time, exposed to the physical representation of everything we had feared for so long. The Flood was truly our opposite. Great Fortress Worlds were created, their surfaces modelled after our own planets. Mechanical Monitors were put in these worlds, along with great Libraries, containing all the DNA material to start again, start a new world after our own had been consumed in fire and blood.
Our ships were modified and added to; our technology was, for the first time, used for war. We had no experience of tactics ourselves, so we created vast armies of Sentinels to command our Fleets. On the ground, Enforcers pummelled the Flood into submission, though it was always a temporary win. As soon as we had defeated one army, two more would appear, destroying our already battered forces. Soon, we were down to only a few bases, a few heavily populated worlds. We had begun to make mistakes, driven by our fear and the frantic need to escape them. Our once perfect ships and planets were easily swept aside by the unending mass of the Flood. They poured over our worlds, accessing the giant databases and libraries where we had kept our common knowledge.
A single message was sent out from the capital. We would need to modify the Fortresses for one final strike. No-one would suspect what this attack would be, or even who it would be directed to… Nevertheless, we added the specifications to the Worlds, adding firing subsystems, pulse generators and an activating crystal, the Index. The Monitors were updated with increased protocols and subroutines, their mechanical bodies the final barriers against our most secret knowledge.
We mobilised our very last armies and armadas, defending our planets to the last. It was not to be. As our refugee ships fled into subspace, pursued closely by the Flood, they massed around our final homeworld. Strangely, however, they did not destroy it as they had the others. Instead, they send down great numbers of forces, exploring and cataloguing what they found. They even spared the primitive, scurrying creatures on there, as they could not be absorbed and were far too numerous to worry about.
The last of us hid out on the rings we had made, struggling to find food among the former paradises. I spent time there, plagued by the emotions I was feeling for the very first time. Separated from any others, I truly felt loneliness. However, I also beheld the beauty of the ringworld, the calmness of its seas, and the undying continuity of the rock and metal beneath me. I was the first and last of my species to feel these thoughts.
At last, I left the ring, carrying out my final orders. Along with the fortresses, we had built an Ark. It served a dual purpose, to activate the ringworlds, finally destroying the Flood, or so we were told, and to harbour the future of our race. The journey to the Ark through subspace was uneventful. There was nothing to see, of course, so I thought. Thought of all that had passed in my long lifetime, and why I was the one to carry out these orders. I had always been lucky… an unfamiliar concept to us, before.
I arrived at the young world, with all its future ahead of it. Millions of species of fauna and flora flourished there, and there was even a suitable host for our DNA. Some early primates had started to rise up from the lower animals, but they had not the final push to make them sentient. If we had not intervened, this cycle would have continued for the next million years. Unless the Flood found them first.
But my first duty was not to continue the species in these creatures, but to make sure they survived later, when the Flood would come for them. As I beheld the control room of the Ark, I realised the true enormity of the task. I was not here to simply stop the Flood, or try to starve them, that could not be stopped or starved. I was here to slow them down, to slow them until us, as new creatures on this planet, could kill them.
Slowly, I typed in the commands that would unleash fire to the galaxy. Pictures, words from the other ringworlds flashed in my mind. Families, huddling together while the pulses flashed and gathered above them. Entire communities, moving together, were showing no emotion of their fate. Legions of Flood, looking inquisitively at the gathering energy from the wrecked windows of our former battleships and bases, eager for the knowledge of what this occurrence was.
With a sound inaudible to our ears, the Ark instructed the ringworlds to fire. The pictures in my head became jumbled, confused, as the fire and light tore across the galaxy, selecting and targeting all sentient life. In moments, it was over. Everything that was aware of its own existence as a species and that could think for itself was destroyed.
Except me. The Ark itself was shielded from the ringworlds; it would not be destroyed this first time. I was alone, here among these primitive creatures and plants. I was the last of my race, the Forerunner to all who came after. At this moment, I was God.
Turning my mind from the deed I had done, I went to my next task. Halting the Flood was one thing, but we could not destroy them. The reasoning behind the splicing of our genes into these creatures confused me. If they became simply copies of our DNA, placed into their bodies, wouldn't we just make the same mistakes as before? To be so content in our supremacy of the galaxy that we create something far worse and far more powerful than ourselves?
Puzzled, as bewildered as the ape-creatures that lived outside, I went over the DNA structure and study notes for the new race. What was there astounded me, a series of changes so complex and great that only a small percentage of the original remained. For the start, we had removed the telepathy gene. That was one of the factors that had contributed to our communal attitude and the eventual creation of the Flood. We had also removed the need to be together. These new creatures did not need to live as one. They could be apart, alone, but functioned better with another.
The next and final change shocked me. We had changed the very fibre of the being, the code in which thought and sense were perceived. We had given them emotion, understanding, desires. They could feel love, anger, and greed. They could see beauty, have friendship, experience all the things we had seen over the millennia. They could feel all the things we could not. They would have wars, suffering, evil and cruel people that dominated them. They all had a darker side, a subconscious desire to steal, lie, and kill. They could love another, experience pleasure and pain, they could see great beauty, create, learn, teach. They had humour, could laugh and cry.
We gave them imperfection.
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