And so eventually they came to an artefact, close enough to see what it held, for the walls were transparent force fields, like the Originator ships.
Close enough for the shock, the sheer horror to bring tears and fury.
Inside the artefact were deck upon deck of humans, naked, floating in the null gravity, feeding and excretion lines linked to the ceiling.
Close enough to see their eyes were open and dead. That many humans had stick-like arms and legs, bodies that were all ridged bone. Except the faces, the heads were all fresh and plump.
There had to be at least a million of them.
Humans collected from Earth for centuries. From Earth colonies. Humans who’d been traded for star drives.
“It’s a fucking human computer,” Marc spat.
“Are they...” Tatia began.
“Vegetative state,” Kara said. “That’s what I get. Identities burned out long ago. My sister’s there. I’ll never find her.”
“I saw one more close up,” Tatia said. “It was full of aliens.”
Kara jabbed down with her hand. “That beautiful planet. I got to be alone for a while.”
She went to her cabin and wept. Then washed her face and told Ishmael to restore her brain to full functioning mode. She had to be at one hundred per cent for the next phase, and probably more.
“What happened?” Marc exploded as Kara walked into the control room.
“You look awful,” Tatia said, concerned. “Is it your sister?”
“Partly,” Kara said. “I got my full brain back. Means I get all that signal. Also a strong sense of what lives down there.” She tried to tighten the left side of her face to control a persistent tremor. It didn’t work. “And it’s gentle, mild. Obsessed with mathematics. Wants the universe to be happy. But on its own terms.”
“Doesn’t matter why they do what they do,” Tatia said. “Or love their mothers. They’re responsible for nightmares. Death. Suffering. Us being here, for fuck’s sake!”
“Any ideas?” from Marc.
< The artefacts are in synchronous orbit around the planet. Mutually supporting each other as it were. Break the chain and the planet’s gravity will prevail.
> In English!
< Fuck one and the rest fall down.
> How?
< You saw what happened to the Originator ship. Same again.
It sounded like a plan. But would that destroy the planet’s aliens?
“Get me down there,” Tatia said. “I know how.” As she did. It was what she was born to do.
< Gravity one point two five Earth, Ishmael announced. < Breathable atmosphere. Watch out for sharks.
The Iron Thrown descended slowly. It allowed time for three humans to appreciate the wonder of a water-world that they hoped to destroy. Not a level surface. In places low hills of water, caused by vast, slow currents. In other places were valleys. The whole sprinkled with vast whirlpools, and waterspouts reaching miles into the cerulean sky.
They were expected. As they came closer to the surface the sea swirled and heaved. A hundred metres above, and a mass of tendrils appeared, as if welcoming them. The Thrown hovered, with Tatia sat in the open airlock. A single tendril, thicker than the others, gelatinous and translucent, rose up towards her.
She reached out her hand.
The tendril felt cool and alive. Peaceful. Curious.
Tatia closed her eyes and merged.
They were a race of jellyfish-like creatures that, similar to Earth’s Turritopsis dohrnii, were virtually immortal. Overcrowding could be a problem. It wasn’t. They could revert to a tiny, polyp-like form and go into suspended animation for hundreds, thousands, millions of years... until it was their turn to become full-grown again. They had been a sentient race for over two billion years. Mathematics was their joy and reason to exist. Long before life had emerged on Earth, they had solved the problems that still intrigued and frustrated humanity.
They were pre-cog. They took huge delight in computing all the possible outcomes from a given scenario, expressed mathematically.
Living in water, being ninety-five per cent water themselves, they had little sense of flesh and blood, or what passed for it in the rest of the galaxy. There were fish-type creatures, but primitive.
The jellies were telepathic and in that sense lived as one vast organism, able to experience the thoughts of creatures many light years away. Netherspace was experienced as a series of immensely complex equations in a continuous state of flux. Alien thoughts were perceived as a multidimensional matrix. These jellyfish were probably the only creatures in the galaxy who understood what other races thought, and could equate it to themselves.
Except.
They had no empathy.
Only a sense of the rightness of things. An appreciation of harmony.
But no emotion as humanity understands the word.
And so they were aware of others’ confusion, happiness, ecstasy and pain, without being able to experience them. They did know that something affected the algorithms of existence. Something affected the harmony they sought, a harmony that would embrace everything. The buzzing fly, wasp at the picnic, bedbug under the pillow, but all known rather than sensed.
There was a possible future that would harmonise the galaxy. They needed an arm. They found the Originators.
A triune race, three symbiotes working as one, who’d long ago traded corporal bodies for mechanics, the Originators survived by stealing technology and science. They had cunning but no creativity. Driven to conquest by the bitter awareness of their own weakness, the Originators were also telepathic, although mildly so compared to the jellyfish mind. They also lacked empathy, inasmuch as they didn’t care how much others suffered. And for them the only way to survive was to dominate, to control all other races... but without direct conflict. To promote the pre-cog way of life by encouraging other races – use of AI, use of high tech traded for rubbish – to become reliant, subservient and prepared to do the Originators’ dirty work: wiping anyone who wouldn’t buy in to the pre-cog dream. That could mean whole civilisations, even races.
For the Originators – ironic, never having originated anything of galactic value to anyone – these strange water-creatures could ensure Originator domination, or at least protection from races who
