“Bollocks! I refuse to believe such an unfounded genesis myth,” quavered Star, shaking her head back and forth.
“Humbling, but true. Not so nice, knowing you were not the priority.”
The holocast rolled on, showing Zikri now in tanks. Humans following, struggling, thrashing in communal vats.
Miko stared up in dismay. The holo projection continued to flash violent scenes across the ceiling as glimpses of more recent hostilities merged with the slaughter. They flickered at barely comprehensible viewing speeds—of Orbs bringing Jakru ships down from the sky to the terrapod stations on Kraetoria, and the manufacturing of ships, disassemblings, backengineering the pirated technology. Locust vessel after locust vessel brought cargo holds full of humans and other races for their tanks.
“You see, it is not so farfetched,” said G. A master-slave relationship that goes on for aeons, until all matter, higher or lower, melds back into the space that birthed it.”
Miko croaked in horror. “To what end?” He gaped at the screens, then his eyes darted to the doors, both entrance and exit, wanting to be free from this alien hell.
The creature stared, with an expression of pity on its face then a brutal coldness that went beyond imagining. “It is the design.”
“What do you mean, ‘design’?” Star wailed. “Godawful tanks are still tanks, you brute! Turn the holocast off!”
The creature stared at her in bemusement. “Alas, a passionate, yet impulsive creature. Most delightful. But the tanks... They’re the most interesting part of the process. You see, the anthropomorphic races, humans included, were really an ironic accident. This planet was supposed to be a closed experiment, a private birthing pool, but an early form of the Mentera broke their restraints and captured one of our birthing labs, raiding the vats of primitive Zikri we had recently seeded. These early prototypes swam gracefully in their birthing liquid.”
It paused, brushing at its shoulder. “The locusts incapacitated the lab overseers, which at that time were mere machines. The vats with their potent spawn, the Zikri, gave the locusts fiendish ideas of creating a constant food source. The smarter insects ‘borrowed’ the idea and refined it, developed the intravenous feeding tanks you seem to know something about. The Zikri fought back against the locust enslavement, and I’m guessing became the war-mongers they are, the pirate masters of the age. They perfected their craft in their hijacking exploits and burgeoning industry of ship-making.”
“So what is this chamber then?” demanded Laren, his forehead dripping in sweat.
“A command console, and record-keeping monitoring station. The rest of the complex: sealed up and camouflaged. Here we conducted experiments on the alien races. We created hybrids of locusts and Zikri, neither like the ones you know. The residing Master failed to destroy this chamber before the locust takeover. Now the Masters are long dead. This chamber never fell into Mentera or Zikri hands when the planetoid became theirs. That would have been—unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“I’ll leave that for you to ponder.”
“So just on a whim you created this?” asked Miko. “I don’t get why you created the Mentera.”
The AI shrugged. “A bet. A simple bet, among others like me. We wanted to see if the basic quintessence of life was goodness—or darkness. We created these races out of sheer scientific curiosity; we infused a proto-specimen sample of raw matter plus charged energy with primitive intelligence, to see how the progeny would fare against one another—if they would coexist and interact.”
Miko shook his head. “You created monsters.”
The Genetrix gave a sad exhalation. “All the horrors and genocides, the atrocities you witnessed on worlds far and near, from the tyranny of the Zikri to the parasitism of the Mentera, all started here. On and on it went, spreading via starships to distant worlds. I am the sad loser of the bet, for I favoured that the races would be compassionate. Time spins on, but I fail to see any shift in the order of things since the first viruses attacked the protozoa of the primordial oceans...since the first feral fishes swam in schools amongst the dark channels and the swirling eddies of prehistoric worlds to crawl onto dry land, giving way to the ferocious reptiles with their teeth and claws—which soon took to the air, feathered and as scavenging and marauding birds. Then to the land beasts that roved unchecked, for ages, on your planet Earth, and infinite other planets.
“We tried splicing genes of less violent species, like your rabbits and deer, but our experience was surprisingly dissatisfying. When the Mentera took the station, our experiments were curtailed. We went to other worlds to construct laboratories, and we discovered, despite our efforts, that evolution took its more sinister course: bearing violent fruits, even worse than Mentera and Zikri, which we promptly destroyed.”
Laren shook his head angrily. “Don’t you feel culpable for this cesspool of evolution you created?”
“I am ageless. I have transcended conscience. I look and blink with amused curiosity at what is here today. Three indomitable races: human, Zikri, locust. All at war, their armadas hovering in the sky like rabid beasts ready to feed on one another.
“Aye, a strange irony. You humans deemed yourselves superior to all other life forms—superior to the locusts, the Zikri, and engaged too in countless destructive wars, though you would deny the truth of it.” The AI’s accusation hung uncomfortably in the air, though uttered with no sarcasm or heat.
A metallic zing came at the door. All had forgotten about the menace on the other side, in light of the thing’s revelations.
Miko jerked around. “Shit, we can’t wait here any longer.”
“Wait!” Laren held up a hand, a desperate gleam in his eye. “You say you created the Zikri and locusts on a whim. Did you create humans too on a similar whim?”
The creature of memory paused. “What would you be willing to
