Furtive
-Patricio is awake, we must go on, there are still several kilometers to go, -said Victor, while he was shaking his companion.
Patricio, still halfway between sleep and wakefulness, turned round as he lifted and shook one of his arms, trying to push Victor away -. Leave me alone, it is not yet dawn, - he said.
-Damn you, Patrick, get up now; if they find us here, I don't know what they'll do to us, -insisted Victor-. These ugly things hate humans.
-Quiet, we are hundreds of miles away from any of their hives, -he replied, still shaking his arm-. Let me sleep a little longer, until it is light, then we will continue.
Victor sat down again next to Patrick, who continued to sleep, had to turn off the communicator of his helmet so as not to hear the noisy snoring of his companion, which fortunately was silenced by the isolation of the helmet, otherwise it would be heard hundreds of meters away, in the silence of the desert.
His visor monitor indicated that it would be dawn in a couple of hours, the temperature was two hundred and seventy Kelvins. In front of them, the sliding platform was loaded with about three hundred kilograms of kalidon amber. The loot for which they had violated Parliament's ban on travel to Earth.
The Goeis were not exactly careful with security, humans took them by surprise once and they had learned nothing from experience, the planetary defenses did not exist, only the hives were guarded, for such a suspicious race, they were very careless.
There were gigantic windows of entrance to the planet, by which a small ship like the Pericles, could enter, without being detected and if it was flown to low altitude and more than a hundred kilometers of its hives, it could be crossed great part of the planet with relative facility.
The kalidonts, were a species originating from the goei world, and only inhabited the Earth, where they had arrived with them. They were unpleasant and aggressive beasts, living in large herds, which used to roam the desert in the center of the largest of the continents, mostly uninhabited.
Their amber, was a secretion product of a gland that they used in their digestive process and that they expelled in their excretions, it is a doughy and dense mass that was very appreciated in the industry of the illegal drugs, for its aphrodisiac effect. Given the prohibition established by Parliament to enter the solar system and consequently the Earth, as a result of the peace agreements with the Goei, trade with this substance was prohibited. Despite this a small number of rogues were willing to sneak onto the Earth, now Goa, to collect this precious and valuable substance.
-I don't understand, why, if generators can reproduce this stuff, molecule by molecule, then it is so valuable that it is collected on this filthy world, - asked Victor aloud, as he stared at the platform.
-I don't know, the nonsense of the fools who consume it, they say that the one generated is not the same. Shut up now, let me sleep, - exclaimed Patrick.
Collecting the amber was not a pleasant task, first I had to scare off the herd of kalidonts, not an easy task given the tendency of these creatures to violently attack those who approached their territory. To drive them away, stimulators were used to stimulate their nervous system, which could cause them unpleasant pain, while having the second effect of making them loosen their sphincters, leading to the next and less pleasant part of the task which was to rummage through their waste, looking for the amber.
After a whole day of collecting amber, exhausted, in their dirty airtight suits and grateful that they could not smell it, Patricio and Victor, a couple of rascals capable of stealing from their own grandmothers, in their first time venturing into this business, let themselves fall to rest, under some palm trees to wait for the sunrise, to return to their ship, left several miles away from the place so as not to alert the warmongers and make them escape without leaving their precious waste.
The sun was already beginning to rise among the palm trees, when Victor, who had been awake for the last hours, worried about the possibility of being found by the goei, stretched out his hand to shake Patricio again and make him wake up to continue his journey.
-Let's go Patricio, it's already dawn, we must continue, I don't want to stay on this planet for much longer, -he said while shaking the shoulder of his companion, who could be heard snoring thunderously through the communicator of his helmet.
-Well, let me stretch if we are going to continue, -he replied, after yawning for a long time.
They were approaching their ship, when they saw the peculiar figure of one of the goei ships appear behind a large dune. They immediately dropped into the sand and crawled slowly to the top of the dune to get a better view of the situation.
-Damn, the sea cucumbers discovered us, -said Patrick, looking at the ship.
-It's strange, it's only a ship and we haven't seen any other, flying over the desert, - answered Victor. Besides, I don't see any of them around.
They agreed to go round the dune, to avoid approaching the ship and to continue towards the Pericles, which was already a few miles away.
Already in the Pericles, while Patricio was starting the engines, Victor was climbing the sliding platform to the ship, when he heard some strange squeaks behind him and turned around, to see a goei pointing his gun at him, while he continued to emit the strident sounds by which they communicated.
The computer in Victor's suit did not have a translator for the goei language, so he did not understand what the creature was trying to tell him. However, the goei continued to scream loudly and threaten him with its weapon.
At that precise moment, Patrick, who was alerted by the ship's perimeter sensors, after approaching behind the creature's back, hit it with one of the shovels they used to collect the amber, making it fall on its face and drop the weapon, which Victor picked up, almost as a reflex, from the ground.
They pushed back the stunned goei, while pointing their own weapon at him, boarded the Pericles and moved as fast as they could away from the place, leaving the atmosphere and quickly setting a course out of the solar system, towards the nearest bridge.
-You know I was curious to know what the cucumber was saying to me, -said Victor, now that the surprise of the goei was over. So I passed the audio recording of his words through the ship's translator, and you don't know what the bastard was saying to me.
-I have no idea, surprise me, - answered Patrick.
-The damned cucumber, he was complaining to me because we were stealing his amber, the wretch was also coming to collect it, to sell it to human traffickers, who buy it at the limits of the solar system, - he said, and then he let out a loud laugh.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/%C3%A1rbol-desierto-namibia-arcilla-pan-64310/
The Horde
-I think we should go, the storm will come soon, the tide is already covering much of the island, -commented Victor, pointing to the coast, where the sea level had already reached the trees that were more than twenty meters from the beach.
An intense wind violently swayed the top of the high pines and the waves began to reach the hill on which Paula and Victor were waiting for a phenomenon that occurred only once every decade.
-We can't, at any moment it will pass, we can't leave here, we're right on the road, - replied Paula, who was watching the horizon.
Far to the east, clouds of purple and brown shades twisted violently, dropping hundreds of flashing lightning amidst deafening thunders. The storm was the most violent on record in two hundred years, and having crossed most of the warm waters of Selene's ocean had contributed to its intensification.
At a distance one could see how trombas rose from the surface of the sea to release it into the clouds, dragging in it small fish and mollusks that had been introduced centuries ago, just before the terraformation had to be stopped.
-It will literally rain fish on the continent when the storm arrives, -commented Victor, seeing the thunderstorms that, like rhythmic columns, were moved by the intense winds.
-Here they come, it's happening! -Paula shouted suddenly, as she watched the western horizon, just away from the storm.
-Damn it, I see them, is it safe to be here? we are right in their way, -exclaimed Victor alarmed, as before his eyes a lead grey cloud began to take shape, becoming darker and darker and bigger over the sea to the west of the island.
-Yes, we're under the ship's deflector, here we'll be fine, - answered Paula.
The strange cloud that grew as it approached more and more, moved in a strange way, it was as if fingers or columns were projected from it, turning and twisting, approaching the surface of the water and then rising again, it seemed to have life, as if it were some kind of gigantic creature, extending its multiple and terrifying appendages, trying to catch its prey.
-This scares me, I can't believe we're here... seriously, we should go... - said Victor stuttering in an almost drowned voice, as he advanced a few steps toward the ship's gate.
-I told you that we are not in danger, if we rise we will probably catch up before we leave the atmosphere, they extend almost forty kilometers high, - answered Paula, without taking away the view of the cloud that was about to reach where they were -. Now it's coming, look how the tentacles touch the sea just off the coast of the island.
From their position at the top of the hill, they could see how the monstrous learners of the cloud began to touch the trees of the island, they were like tornadoes that moved diagonally and almost horizontally, sweeping and trapping everything they touched, in their path, only unpopulated land of life was left, as if an excavator pulled pieces from the soil of the island, taking with it everything in its path.
Then, as if from an enormous hand, with multiple fingers, it were a point rising from that gigantic grey wall that was approaching, a fragment of it was projected on the hill where they were, darkening the whole sky above them. Before such an overwhelming vision, Victor lowered his face and his eyes tightening his eyelids, as if waiting for something to inevitably hit him; while Paula, almost hypnotized, watched with attention as those fingers, which seemed to be formed by infinity of particles that moved quickly and agitatingly approached, falling from all directions on them, as if trying to grab the whole hill, as if it were a simple pile of earth.
Recovering his lost courage, Victor again opened his eyes and lifted his face, to see how the turbulent fingers collided with the invisible deflecting barrier, producing intense blue sparkles, to be repelled and dispersed in all directions, as if from the jet of water that hits the base of a spoon.
Around the barrier, countless tiny devices the size of small insects devoured everything in their path like locusts. The cloud was formed by hundreds of millions of these tiny robots of scavengers, that in the times of the terraformation were in charge of getting rid of the dead organic matter, accelerating its disintegration and return to the ecosystem; but now, due to a bad operation of the AI that governs the adaptation of this planet, which was the cause of the abandonment of this world, every ten years, they were generated in mass in a short period of time and thrown to the environment with the strange instruction to devastate all organic matter that they found in their path.
Minutes later, as quickly and violently as they had approached from the continent beyond the horizon to the west of the island, they moved away on their unstoppable path to circumvent the planet. Soon they would encounter the storm that was approaching to the east; they would probably cross it without paying much attention to it, perhaps even subtracting a good part of its intensity from its passage.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/puesta-de-sol-isla-cielo-aguas-3087145/
Storm
The storm resounded beyond the mountains, intense flashes illuminated the whole sky, the usually cheerful cyan blue, had turned into a dark brownish gray. In the distance, the trees in the mountains could be seen shaking violently from one side to the other, like a thick carpet being combed with the palm of the hand.
Despite the violence that was unleashed in the mountains, in the valley, the lake remained so still that it resembled a glass floor, there was not a single wave on its surface, the fish that usually swarmed from one side to the other, jumping to catch insects had disappeared completely.
-This is going to be ugly, -exclaimed Ishmael, watching the pines rock -. At the right time, the climate control satellite came out of service, in the middle of the season of murderous storms!
The so-called killer storms, it was a seasonal atmospheric phenomenon of Callisto, it was not that someone had ever died because of them, at least not known, but if they stood out for their ferocity, combining winds of more than three hundred kilometers per hour and heavy rainfall, which could cause the sliding of the slopes of the mountains, by saturation of the terrain.
However, it was not a very frequent phenomenon, Calisto revolved around his star in a period of almost four standard Heracles years, and the season lasted about three months, and only two or three storms were intense enough to cause problems.
To control the effect of these storms, a network of atmospheric control satellites was established which, through the use of intense lasers, were capable of disintegrating the storms before they caused damage, however, the satellite covering the region where the northern forest of Callisto 4 is located was taken out of service, due to operational problems, shortly before the arrival of the storm in its area of incidence.
-I hope the structure resists, -commented Belinda, while it was recharging from one of the thick concrete columns that supported the walls of the lake's ranger station in the northern forest -. Are all the drones out of operation, are they?
-Almost all of them, those of the west will be deactivated last, they will continue patrolling until the storm reaches them, - replied Ismael -. We'd better go inside, it'll start in a gale soon.
Upon entering, the first thing they could see was the monitoring screen of one of the drones, which showed a warning message. On the bank of a river in the western region of the forest, about ten kilometers from where they were, a group of five men were fishing quietly without paying attention to the approaching storm.
-What the hell are they doing there? -exclaimed Belinda as she looked at the screen -. We must get them out.
-I'll have the drone give them a warning, hopefully they'll listen, -replied Ishmael.
However, the fishermen ignored the warning given to them by the drone through its loudspeaker. -We'll have to go there, the robots are not near the area, we'll get there sooner if we go in the octopod, -said Ismael, taking the overalls and the hull of the coat rack next to the exit door, so did Belinda.
Outside the panorama had already begun to change, the calm of the lake was broken by hundreds of drops that fell even slightly, while the breeze already began to take speed, shaking the pines of the surroundings.
They went up to the octopod and started the way to the western sector of the forest, in search of the fishermen, the wind became more and more intense and the drops became thicker and more abundant.
-Damn, this was not what I expected to be doing during the storm, -said Ismael, operating the peculiar mechanical spider.
-Turn on the deflectors, I don't like this at all, it might hit us with some object, -said Belinda.
Luckily for them the parks department had foreseen situations like this and had provided the ranger posts with octopods equipped with deflectors, however, they were not military grade barriers, their capacity allowed them only to protect the occupants against low speed impacts, and not too heavy objects.
The storm followed, unleashing all their fury, leaves, branches and fruits and any object that could be uprooted from the gigantic trees, was thrown as a projectile in the direction of the wind, and Belinda and Ismael, ran at full speed with the wind behind them.
The deflector was constantly hit by projectiles, on one occasion a heavy branch, which fell from the top of the trees hit the barrier from above and the impact pushed the legs of the octopod, making them flex.
When they were about to reach the riviera, where the fishermen were, suddenly the storm ceased, a kind of hole was opened between the clouds and the bright cyan sky of Callisto appeared between them.
-What the hell happened? -Ishmael exclaimed in surprise -. I thought we were going to die.
-I think the satellite is working again, -said Belinda relieved -. A little longer and we didn't count it.
They continued on to the river and found the fishermen, comfortably seated, drinking beers, with their rods unattended, mounted on supports on the bank of the river.
-You might know what they do here when a storm was coming, -said Belinda, clearly furious -. We almost died to come here, why didn't they heed the drone's warning?
-The flying robot, - replied one, clearly drunk -. What wasn't a joke?
-Are you fools, -said another, also passed out in drinks -. Don't you see that the atmospheric control satellite undoes the storms, what do you think happened? -he asked sardonically.
Belinda and Ismael arrested the fishermen for being drunk in a public park and took them by octopod on their way to the lake ranger station, where they would be handed over to the security directorate. To their surprise, when they arrived at the post, they found that the whole roof of the building had collapsed, by the intense wind, if they had been there they would probably have been crushed to death.
When Ishmael saw this, he stopped the octopod and went down, freed the fishermen's wives, and told them to leave, after reprimanding them.
-What the hell are you going to let them go, we almost died because of them, -said Belinda.
-Rather, we didn't die because of them, -replied Ishmael.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/naturaleza-aguas-lago-isla-paisaje-3082832/
Alone
-This is the kind of situation we always get ourselves into because of you, -said Virginia, who walked quickly across the grass with an expression of frustration on her face.
-I told you it wasn't my fault that the antimatter reactor ran out, - answered Isaiah, as he tried to keep up with him as he dragged a large metal container with a small hand lift.
-Of course it's your fault, it's your responsibility as a pilot to check that all the ship's checkpoints were met before leaving Dione harbour, -she replied, turning and looking at him with her face red with anger.
-The service reviews are done by the port engineering authority, not me, I am only in charge of receiving the results of the evaluation, - replied Isaiah, stopping when he saw Virginia's expression -. I only verify that everything was in conformity and if there are recommendations or warnings, I communicate them to the workshop so that they can carry out the corresponding work; and there was nothing to do, according to the engineering report...
-Shut up now, I don't want to listen to your excuses anymore, -she replied, turning around and continuing her walk up the hill.
The antimatter reactor suddenly ran out, so in an escape capsule they had to go to the moon in the process of terraforming a giant planet to shelter themselves while they received help.
They descended following the signal from the lighthouse of the main node of the terraformation network, with the intention of taking shelter in it. Now, after leaving the capsule at the foot of a hill on which the node stood, they hurriedly walked, as it quickly began to darken as the gigantic silhouette of the planet set itself between the hills to the east of where they were.
On the hill, with one side plunged into the deepest darkness, while the other was lightly illuminated by the dim amber light reflected by the already almost hidden planet, was the node, a building, completely alone, without any lighting and almost completely closed, with the exception of a sector intended to serve as accommodation for environmental engineers who for reasons of work need to shelter in it while completing their tasks.
After five days of waiting to be rescued, they decided to try to enter the central room of the node to try to send a message through the satellite messages orbiting the moon. After requesting authorization from the IA of terraformation, they were able to access the emergency communications system through the external panel.
-Please, LUCY sends the message through the messaging satellite to the nearest relay station - said Isaiah, after recording a message explaining the situation and requesting to be rescued.
After several minutes of no response from LUCY, an error code appeared on the panel screen.
-It's not possible to broadcast the message, the satellite seems to be offline, -said LUCY -such seems that its radio battery has run out.
-How long has it been since this planet has been visited by environmental engineers? -Isaiah asked.
-The transformation of this planet was suspended two thousand three hundred and four years ago, - said LUCY -. The next review of parameters will be carried out when the two thousand five hundred years have passed, when it will be verified whether it is resumed or postponed for another equal period of time.
-Damn it, how is that possible, well we'll have to wait for them to receive the signal from our lighthouse radio, -said Isaiah, turning to see Virginia.
-Then we'll have to keep waiting, how long will it take for the signal to be received? -she asked.
-Well, the relay station is twenty light days from here more or less, hence it should be delayed in a data packet across the bridge to the nearest emergency service perhaps ten or twenty days more and after that, the time it takes for the rescue ship to come, like three or four more days, should be no more than fifty days, forty-five discounting the five we already have here, -said Isaiah.
-Damn it, forty-five more days of waiting. What shall we do in the meantime? -asked Virginia.
-I don't know, we'll figure something out, it'll be a bit of a walk to see what's interesting here, -he said -. LUCY, please tell me why was the terraformation of this moon suspended," he asked, addressing the LUCY panel this time.
-The planet's intense magnetic field affects communications, no form of electromagnetic emission can be used to communicate with space outside the area of influence of its field, only data packets sent by mechanical means can be used to transmit messages.
-And how great is the influence of the planet's magnetic field? -Isaiah asks.
-Boat beyond the five satellites, almost to the asteroid belt, -answered LUCY.
-Shit!, it can't be, what a disaster! - exclaimed Isaiah, clearly altered.
-What happened, what does that mean?- asked Virginia.
-That we'll have to wait longer, -he replied.
-It can't be, how much longer? -she said, heartbroken.
-About two hundred years more, - replied Isaiah.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/bosque-niebla-oscuro-soledad-549664/
A New World
The intense blue colour of the sky impressed Roland, who was used to ochre and reddish firmaments. "It's strange to get a world that, before it's terraformed, has a sky so blue," he thought. The levels of nitrogen and carbon dioxide were compatible with those of a breathable atmosphere, but there was still one element missing for this one, oxygen.
-It will take a lot of hydrolysis, to generate enough oxygen, - he said aloud, to himself, as he looked at the wall of glacial ice forming the coast of the continent -. Fortunately there will be no shortage of water.
"All the engineers will talk to themselves or it will just be me," he thought as he continued his tour of the mainland coast. The small ship flew along the edge of the glacier, until it reached a region where the rocks were bare. It ascended to fly over the area and saw a plain covered with clayey soil.
After descending, he put on heavy boots, took a breathing mask, adjusted the oxygen levels and the temperature from the controls of his suit and left the ship to feel the environment by himself. Most of the environmental engineers had only to go through the candidate planets in their ships, to recognize the surface and take samples, but he liked to feel the floor and if possible to perceive in his face, the breeze and the rain of the planets.
-This world will be easy for a LUCY, there will be no major problem - he spoke again only -. It's a matter of introducing photosynthetic bacteria or if you want the process to be faster, use the hydrolysis reactors, to speed up the production of oxygen, and then start gradually introducing the necessary forms of life, - he paused, realizing that he was talking to himself -. If the division psychiatrist saw me he would send me to rest for a time.
He bent down, kneeling on the ground, the clay layer was dry and cracked, the yellow sun of that world shone brightly warming his back. Before he went out he thought it would be cold, but actually it was a pleasant two hundred and eighty eight Kelvins, he found it fascinating, as so close by there was a gigantic glacier, and yet here, a little less than five kilometres from it, the temperature was so pleasant.
He laid one of his gloved hands on the floor and with his fingers scratched a bit of clay, and sprayed it with his fingers, then he thought for a moment and removed a glove and repeated the operation with his bare hand.
The earth seemed pleasantly fluffy and cold to him, even though it was so dry. "It rained a few days ago," he thought, as he got up and shook the earth off his hands and knee.
-Yes, this is going to be a great acquisition, it's going to be a nice world, -he said-. What a damned loneliness, if it wasn't for moments like this, this job would be awful.
He returned to the ship, he had already travelled a good part of the planet, in his twenty days there he had known its four continents, imagining them with their bare plains covered with grass and bushes, their mountains and valleys covered with thick forests, and the bottom of their seas populated by corals and seaweed everywhere. A world where life would proliferate and humans would thrive.
He activated the quantum communication panel, by which he could send small information packages that, through a quantum link, were instantly received at the headquarters of the environmental engineers unit.
He only completed a short form with the corresponding recommendations and then opened the database of names, which collected all the catalogued names, to be used on the worlds that would be inhabited.
-You don't deserve to be called PET-155 anymore, - he said, as he looked through the list with his eyes - I like this one ...- he selected one of the names from the projection and dragged it to the form he had just completed, and then sent it to the environmental engineering division -. It's done, soon the terraforming ship will arrive and a LUCY will take care of you, - he said in a friendly tone.
He returned to the cabin of the small ship and had it raised, within minutes it was out of the atmosphere of the planet and further and further away from its gravitational influence. He looked back and saw how he was moving away from that beautiful blue world.
-See you later, Dione, I'll be back in a hundred years or so to see how your progress is going, - he said in a nostalgic tone as he moved away from that, his best acquisition to date-. This is a lonely job.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/iceberg-agua-mar-espejado-471549/
Reflection / Reflejo [Eng-Spa]
Reflection [Eng]
I look once more at my reflection, and I do not recognize myself, who is this being that with hollow eyes looks at me from the other side of the glass, what new life had I taken now, as a vessel for my existence?
I was dragged out of the room, pushed by the four motor appendages of that body, while leaving a thin translucent layer behind it, which outlined its path through the rooms of the ship.
As I advanced, the polished surface of the walls reminded me of the peculiar appearance of that vessel, thousands of forms, thousands of beings, and its body structure was irrelevant, just one more necessary instrument, in order to continue with my purpose.
Goai called itself that primitive species, to which my present lodging belonged, its collective memory would be of great value to know its world and that of its ancestors, today Goa was its new home, the world that before was called Earth, origin of the humans, race whose destiny is lost in the confines of the time, beyond all the known.
However, for the Goais it will not be like that, their existence in this universe was already touched by the catastrophe and it will be again, in two other occasions, in the first one, the humans will rescue them at the limit of their extinction. But on the second, no one will be there to help them; when their benefactors, motivated by their tireless desire to expand, have outgrown the galaxy.
This reflection that follows me wherever I go, reminds me that I am the only one, that my existence is different from others, that I am timeless and immaterial, and that I have lived in solitude and will continue to do so, as long as my crusade continues, as long as my effort to change what will once be continues. And that is why I must continue to take lives, lives that will be my link to this dimension of substance, of matter with density, of which I require, in order to manipulate existence according to my needs.
This reflection reminds me of my inability to interact by myself with what surrounds me, an impossibility that has turned me into a parasite, an inhabitant of other bodies, a predator of innocent creatures, whose lives I need, in order to be, in this three-dimensional prison.
This reflection reminds me that, although my being is infinite, eternal and in many ways magnanimous, it needs to be tied to materiality, in order to fulfill its objective.
Reflejo [Spa]
Miro una vez más mi reflejo, y no me reconozco a mí mismo, ¿quién es este ser que con ojos huecos me mira desde el otro lado del cristal?, ¿qué nueva vida había tomado ahora, como recipiente para mi existencia?
Me arrastró fuera de la habitación, empujándome con los cuatro apéndices motrices con los que contaba aquel cuerpo, mientras deja una delgada capa traslúcida tras de él, que delineaba su camino a través de las habitaciones de la nave.
A medida que avanzaba, la pulida superficie de las paredes, me recordaba la peculiar apariencia de aquel recipiente, miles de formas, miles de seres, ya su estructura corporal resultaba irrelevante, sólo un necesario instrumento más, para poder continuar con mi propósito.
Goai se hacía llamar aquella primitiva especie, a la cual pertenecía mi actual alojamiento, su memoria colectiva seria de gran valor para conocer su mundo y el de sus ancestros, hoy Goa era su nuevo hogar, el mundo que antes era llamado Tierra, origen de los humanos, raza cuyo destino se pierde en los confines del tiempo, más allá de todo lo conocido.
Sin embargo, para los goais no será así, su existencia en este universo ya fue tocada por la catástrofe y nuevamente lo será, en otras dos ocasiones, en la primera, los humanos los rescataran al límite de su extinción. Pero en la segunda, nadie estará ahí para ayudarlos; cuando a sus benefactores, motivados por su incansable deseo de expansión, les haya quedado pequeña la galaxia.
Este reflejo que me sigue a donde avanzo, me recuerda que soy el único, que mi existencia es diferente a otras, que soy atemporal e inmaterial, y que he vivido en soledad y así seguirá siendo, mientras continúe mi cruzada, mientras continúe mi esfuerzo por cambiar lo que una vez será. Y por eso debo seguir tomando vidas, vidas que sean mi nexo con esta dimensión de sustancia, de materia con densidad, de la cual requiero, para poder manipular la existencia según mis necesidades.
Este reflejo que me recuerda mi incapacidad de interactuar por mí mismo con lo que me rodea, imposibilidad que me ha convertido en un parasito, en un morador de otros cuerpos, en un depredador de criaturas inocentes, cuyas vidas necesito, para poder ser, en esta cárcel de tres dimensiones.
Este reflejo que me recuerda que, aunque mi ser sea infinito, eterno y en muchas formas magnánimo, necesita estar atado a la materialidad, para poder cumplir con su objetivo.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/la-bola-de-cristal-de-la-fotograf%C3%ADa-3894871/
Dragon Eggs
-According to records, dozens of planets like this one have been found,- Damien explained to the attendees.- There are approximately fifteen in this sector of the galaxy alone.
-And is there any explanation for the large number of inhabited planets in this specific region? -asked a young man of pale complexion and bristly black hair.
-There is no explanation for such a thing, it can only be a simple coincidence, we are a region with a large population of stars with good conditions to host inhabited planets - replied Damien -. There are those who have proposed the idea that there may have been some kind of propagation of amino acids and other complex organic molecules, but the mechanism by which this could have occurred is unknown, and the planets are very distant from each other.
-And how do you explain the fact that all life forms have suddenly become extinct, in such a short period of time, for no apparent reason? -asked the same young man.
-We also don't know exactly, but it is possible that it was some event of great magnitude, perhaps a gamma radiation bombardment, product of one or several supernovae, but it is only speculation, - replied Damien.
The ship of the Heracles academy, where the group of students and their professor were located, descended into the atmosphere of the planet, it was an Earth class planet, or Heracles class as it had been redefined recently, due to the current conditions of uninhabitability of the planet of origin of humanity. However, the planet was completely devoid of life forms, its atmosphere had invariable levels of gases, which coincided with those necessary for human life, as well as other species found on other planets.
-The fossil record of this planet shows that about two hundred and fifty million years ago, some sort of event occurred which completely annihilated, in a very short period of time, all life on this planet, -explained Damien, as the ship approached the surface of the sea, where a small pile of rocks rose from between the waters.
Slowly he landed on the surface and the class, which was on the observation deck, which was submerged beneath the waterline, could see that the rocks seemed to have been piled up on purpose, they were multiple cylindrical objects with rounded ends.
-Are these the remains of some kind of civilization, -asked in alarm, a beautiful young woman with a smiling face sitting in the front row of seats.
-No, look carefully, these are petrified eggs, a whole pile of them, -said Damien -. They are the eggs of a kind of aquatic creature, similar to a lizard. The event that caused the extinction of the creatures of this planet suddenly ended even with bacteria or any other organism that could have degraded the living matter, while the shell, although slightly porous, was formed by a mixture of minerals resistant to erosion and oxidation, over time the minerals in the water were absorbed by the eggs and petrified.
-Professor Damien, and was the spread equally abrupt and massive on the other planets of this sector? -asked the same young man with bristly hair as before.
-Yes, in general all the worlds suffered from a massive extension event situated in the same lapse of time, which ended up with absolutely all the life forms that existed in them, only an inhabited world, situated on the periphery of this sector managed to maintain enough life forms to be able to recover later," replied Damien - do you know what that world was?
The young people saw each other in silence.
-Thank you that I am not your astrometry teacher... look at this, -said Damien with a sardonic smile, after which a three-dimensional map of the sector of spherical space was projected into the space in the middle of the room, where the young people were arranged in three concentric circles in a row of seats, inside which was, almost in the center, the planetary system in which they were, while in a part of the surface of the sphere a point was illuminated, that later was extended to show a system formed by a yellow dwarf star, orbited by nine planets and another multitude of smaller objects-. Don't you recognize it?...it's the solar system, this is where we came from,- he said, and then he expanded the proximities of the star even further -. And that third planet is the Earth.
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The Forgotten World
It had been one hundred and thirty-two years since Herman had chosen a self-imposed exile for his life, this did not mean that he never had contact with anyone, he occasionally traveled to Amphitrite, for provisions or for some medical need, his last trip, had been thirty-three years ago, when he precisely required an upgrade of his nanomachines, an annoying procedure that kept him eight weeks away from his lonely Eden, the longest time he had been away from it; fortunately he would not require another upgrade until another two hundred years had passed.
His last guest was Siegfried, one of his former colleagues in the environmental engineering division, who occasionally visited him, just to learn about his life. It was he and Leopold, who had been most astonished by his decision to withdraw from everything after retiring from his work.
He did not know at what point in his life, he realized that loneliness was more than an obligation, a life choice. He was never a man particularly attached to joining groups, since his years in the academy, he did not socialize with more than two or three people, whom he used to call friends, even if his relationship with them did not go much beyond the academic.
When he joined the environmental engineering division, his fascination with solitude began to take shape, it was nine hundred and twenty years of service, only three people stayed longer than him in the division, and for them, it was more of an obligation, than an election, they were all military, from the first centuries of parliament and in great part their bodies were modified as part of the program, they were more machines than men. Proof of just how ruthless division work can be.
During his constant travels, he met this small but beautiful world, with its pleasant temperature, clean blue sky, and clear and translucent waters. Its atmosphere, while not entirely safe for humans or animals, could be safely breathed for periods of time not exceeding twenty or thirty minutes, after which the low levels of oxygen would begin to affect anyone who inhaled it.
However, in spite of this, many plants and fungi developed by the division could live and develop safely in this environment, which made it easily terraformable. However, its mother star had a companion, which would eventually cause the decay of the planet's orbit, which ruled it out as a usable world.
However, he felt an intense love for this discovery, perhaps he could spend his life in it, he thought at some point, discarding the idea later as a rant; but every time he could and his route allowed him, he visited that small and forgotten jewel, condemned to death.
After a time, not only did he begin to frequent it when his route permitted, he began first to make detours and then to plan visits, when he was not on duty, which became longer and longer.
So much time in solitude, had driven him mad, I come to think, his visits to Heracles and Palas, were less and less pleasant to him, even to the point of appearing abhorrent to him, the hustle and bustle of his cities overwhelmed him, leading him to renounce visiting these worlds, and to deal with all his affairs by telepresence or in the nearby space stations. Desperately wanting to escape from the human presence.
It was then that he made the decision that would bring him to where he was now. As time went by, he built a small place of escape, on the shores of one of the many lakes of incredibly pure waters, of that world, when his little paradise of solitude was finished, he withdrew from the division, to the surprise of his companions, who would later end up being alarmed by his decision to live as a hermit on that world, which he had discovered hundreds of years before. In spite of the complaints and calls for attention, nothing made him change what had already been decided.
Now, more than a hundred years later, sitting in front of the lake, watching several of the satellites of his world come out of the horizon, while the only sound that could be heard was the wind spinning its four wind generators and with nothing else to worry about but feeding his animals and fertilizing his plants, it seemed to him that his decision had been the greatest success of his life. He had the only thing he wanted, solitude.
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The Gates of Avalon
The Gate to Avalon was like any other space station, two giant rings linked in parallel, both rotating on the same axis, at sufficient speed to simulate the effect of gravity, thanks to centrifugal force.
However, unlike any other space station, the gateway looked more like a hospital than a city. The only departments, dining rooms or commercial facilities that existed were for the on-board personnel, and they occupied only ten percent of the station's space, the other forty percent was a space set aside to house up to two hundred standard ships, and the remaining fifty percent of the on-board space was made up of endless cubicles, designed to serve Avalon's guests.
The space transport had left the orbit of Palas, two days ago and was entering the space of the Gate to Avalon, Freddy Beron, attentively observed through the front window the docking operation. As he approached, he could notice that the station which at a distance seemed to be fixed, was actually rotating on its axis and the closer they got, he could feel how the ship also began to rotate faster and faster, until the entrance to the station located in its central structure, seemed to be fixed in front, this happened when the rotation speed of the ship equaled that of the station.
After entering, they were held by robotic arms that transported the ship through a long tunnel to the docking and disembarking area. Particularly disturbing was the sensation, the rapid weight gain, that the body suffered as the movement through that long tunnel brought them closer to one of the two rings of the station.
As Freddy and the other passengers on the robot ferry descended, they were transported by a group of friendly aides to different cubicles, where they were asked to undress and then put on a thin gown, similar to those used in medical consultations.
Freddy did as he was told and then sat down on the stretcher, which was the only piece of furniture in the room. He was told to wait a few minutes, while the examiner who would activate the portal came. Over his head hung a large device which reminded him of hospital positron scanners, while at the head of the stretcher hung a ring, which for some reason he assumed would, at some point, pass through with his body on the stretcher. Perhaps that would be the portal the aide had spoken of, he thought.
As he was almost hypnotized, looking at the blue lights of the device hanging over his head, the examiner entered, as he introduced himself. The pale, bald man, emaciated and almost expressionless, asked him to lie down and then pulled out from under the stretcher a small device, similar to a signal gun, which was pointed at his chest, while he pulled the trigger, after which a beep sounded. Again and again he repeated the operation, without words, pointing the device at his face, arms, different parts of the chest, abdomen, genitals and legs.
After what Freddy assumed was a medical examination, for there was a reason the man was an examiner, the unfriendly individual put the device back in place and approached the control panel which was at the foot of the stretcher, after typing something, the device suspended from the ceiling, emitted a green laser beam, which began to travel up and down his body, when this was over, the man again manipulated the console and a buzz began to emerge from somewhere in the room which he could not determine.
-I wish you a happy stay at Avalon- -said the silent examiner, together before the ring that had attracted his attention began to approach him.
-Wait, I'll travel like this in this stupid robe? What about my luggage? -It was the only thing Freddy thought to say.
-Relax your robe, that's all you'll need, -answered the man with a wide, sardonic smile.
When the ring began to approach his face, he could see a very white light emerging from it, which, being directly over his eyes, blinded him for a few moments, and as his sight cleared, he could see that he was standing inside what appeared to be a closed glass capsule. In front of him, on the other side of the glass, there was a beautiful woman with a dark complexion, long silver hair and a voluptuous body, dressed in a tight and revealing full white.
He tried to move, but felt his body being held by some kind of clamps, which after a few seconds, seemed to fade and release him, the front of the capsule opened and the beautiful young woman received him with a wide and sensual smile.
-Welcome to Avalon, my name is Selena and I will guide you on your visit to our peace and fun center -she said in a sweet and melodious voice. -Please follow me, so that you can start with your experience.
Freddy walked behind the girl, partially hypnotized by the rhythmic and sensual movement of her hips, looked to his right and could see himself reflected on the surface of the glass panel that separated the room in which he was from another similar one, to his surprise he was also dressed in a white one-piece, although more discreet than the girl's. In the room next door, visible through the partially translucent glass, he thought he saw another of the passengers on the robot ferry to the space station coming out of his room, also guided by a sexy blonde woman.
He turned around and behind him he could see how in the capsule from which he had come, as if it were a candy machine, a new robot body, almost all similar to a human, but lacking a face or any other distinctive feature, which would allow the identification of age, gender or ethnicity, was pushed from behind, towards the vicinity of the crystal by a machine, so that then a face began to form, on his formerly completely white face, before the passage of a laser light beam, which was projected from the top of the capsule.
More than a thousand light years away from that place, in the space station Gate to Avalon, Freddy's body remained attached to the stretcher, where before it had been auscultated by the examiner, suspended in a state similar to deep sleep, in which all his conscious bodily functions had been suspended and his brain remained active connected by a quantum link to his robotic avatar in Avalon, an exclusive and expensive adult entertainment center, located in a location known to few, on the borders of the region of the Orion arm occupied by humanity.
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ALBUS
The morning was warmer than usual, the breeze was blowing, rocking the trees and shaking the waters of the lake. On the shore, the small fleet of small boats for trips was reactivated, ready for couples, families or fools, hoping to catch one of the hundreds of trout that populated its waters, but who were too smart to be caught with crumbs or rubber lures, to board them to sail the crystal-clear waters.
Not far from the shore, in one of the games in the park, Beatriz and her sister Helena were rocking on the swings, using their legs to propel themselves faster and faster, going around the water as if they were the blades of a rotor.
-Stop that now! -Alicia shouted-. Or I won't bring you back.
-You're a boring Ali -shouted Beatrice as her voice came and went with the swings.
-Get down from there now! -After shouting this, Alice suddenly fell back to the ground, convulsing violently, arching her body, her feet resting on the ground while her crown supported the other end and the back of her hands with her stiff arms supported her, her body arching and whipping against the grass, again and again until it became stiff in an arch, while her face formed a grotesque grimace.
Beatriz, the older of the two girls, got off the swing and after seeing her babysitter squirming on the ground, she ran to the booth where the park guards were, while Helena screamed and cried inconsolably for help next to Alicia.
A few yards from the guard post, Beatriz felt an intense burst of pain in her skull, which seemed to spread all over her back, after which she also fell onto the grass, writhing frantically, until she was as motionless as a log with her arms and legs stiff and her head stretched backwards, with her mouth and eyes wide open, as she emitted a horrible, gasping grunt.
The guards who were able to see her fall immediately called the emergency services and took both of them to the hospital in the residential block, where hours later, after trying by all means to stop the violent spasms they were suffering from, the horrified doctors would see them become the first reported victims of the strange illness.
Three days later four new cases were presented, then twelve, thirty, one hundred and forty, after one month one hundred and ninety thousand people from the residential area had perished in the midst of a violent collapse of their entire central nervous system, followed by cardiac and respiratory collapse.
Ignorant of the means by which the disease was spreading or how it was acting on the body, the doctors were forced, only to provide strong painkillers that would reduce the agony of those infected while they waited, the irremediable outcome.
The cause of the disease was discovered a little more than a month after the beginning of the epidemic, a prion, a protein, that although it exists in the human body, in its wild state it is badly folded and once it entered the organism it was capable of modifying other similar proteins, transmitting its fold and altering the genes, having the effect of destroying, quickly, the cerebral cortex and the nervous system of whoever contracted it.
This peculiar molecular killer was named ALBUS, after its first two victims Alicia Landau and Beatriz Urich Salas. It was never known how the prion reached the ventilation system and the water of the Titan colony. Although it was believed that these were the first ways of contagion, even after the construction of new filtering systems, which managed to remove it from air and water, contagion continued, although to a lesser degree.
Ten years after the first two cases were reported, ALBUS disappeared; the number of cases gradually decreased, until it finally ceased. In its wake it was directly responsible for the death of a third of the colony's population, while a similar number appeared to be caused by the effects that the epidemic and quarantine had on society, the economic collapse due to an intense reduction in production, famine, collapse of the hospital system and public services, leading to the fall of the last colony in the solar system.
Years after the crisis caused by ALBUS, the last settlers would board the Elpis generation ship, heading for Proxima Centauri. In the hope of getting a new world to inhabit.
Image Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PDB_1qm1_EBI.jpg
Vicente's Adventure
"La mar", as they called it in their village, was rough, strong waves were shaking Vicente's little boat, making him regret his decision. That morning he had decided to do what, in his more than thirty years as a fisherman, he had not done, to venture out to sea by himself; his son, who accompanied him during the vacations, had already started his classes at the town's high school and his compadre Rubén, his companion for the day, was sick with flu.
He didn't lack experience to do it, but if there was one thing he had learned from his father, it was to never feel too comfortable at sea, no matter how calm it seemed and how clear the sky was, everything could change suddenly and that was what had just happened. At one o'clock in the morning, when he had pushed his boat on the sand into the water, there were hardly any waves and a light and refreshing breeze was blowing, which contrasted with the heat inside his precarious house. What could happen, he thought, at this time of year it hardly ever rained and the sky was completely clear and calm.
More adventurous than usual, he put up his reels, the bait, the breakfast that his wife had made for him, a container of water and went into the sea, he would not go far from the coast, so that in case of any emergency, his neighbors could see him from the beach. He couldn't afford not to go out and miss the day's fishing, it was becoming less and less profitable for him to go out, because of the price of fuel and how difficult it was to get it.
After six o'clock in the morning, when he had been casting his lines for several hours without much success, a warm and intense breeze started blowing from the island and the current changed, being carried away by an intense swell, which in a short time took him away from the beach. At the same time the sky, which had already cleared up, with the rising of the sun, began to darken suddenly, with dense clouds of a deep gray lead color, which hid the dawn and seemed to transform it, again, into a dismal night.
Frightened by the sudden change in the sea, he quickly began to pick up the longline, which for his fortune, had not broken; just as it had been all morning, all the hooks were still with the bait intact, no fish had even come close to bite it, the same happened with the other fishing lines that he also picked up in a hurry. The violent swaying of the small boat made him reconsider how good his decision had been to go alone, preferring to pick up everything and return in a hurry to the beach.
It was then when the blackness of the sky seemed to break for a moment, as if to make way for a huge object similar to a large oyster, which surrounded by a bright green glow, fell in a hurry, remaining suspended a few meters above Vicente's head.
Terrified, the man let go of the line he was picking up and without caring about the other two he had left in the water, he began to pull on the rope to try to start the engine to get away from that thing, but as usual, his, now old Suzuki, did not want to respond immediately.
Before he could do anything, Vicente felt that the boat stayed very still, almost as if he were not touching the sea. He released the rope from the engine and leaned forward, hiding his face between his knees and putting his hands on the back of his head, closed his eyes and waited with his teeth clenched, hoping that everything would pass and that when he lifted his head, everything would be over.
When Vincent raised his head, instead of being in the middle of the sea, as he had expected, he found himself reflected on a pair of very round eyes without sclera, with a large yellow pupil and three black irises, which formed a perfect equilateral triangle, in the center of each one.
The man shouted and jumped backward, falling backwards on the ground. He was no longer in his rock, or even in the sea; on his head there was a high silvery ceiling, which seemingly reflected a light whose origin he could not determine; lying down on his back, almost paralyzed, he dared to lean his head forward to see the owner of those disturbing yellow eyes.
-Damn mommy, what a sheath this is! -he shouted, and as he could, he began to crawl backwards, pushing himself with his feet, elbows and forearms.
In front of him, leaning forward, like someone who was bending over to get a closer look at a worm crawling on the ground, there was a gigantic hairy being like a monkey, but with a silky blond coat, like that of one of those gringos who used to come by the piles to visit the island, his two enormous eyes decorated an elongated head, in a position far above what would be on any animal he knew, it was as if they seemed to come out from above his forehead. At the height of what could be his cheeks, on each side of his face, there were two big, dark holes which he believed were the holes in his nose, and in the middle of both holes, almost at the height of what could be his jaw, there was a big mouth with two fleshy, bluish lips.
-Cousin you are so ugly! -he exclaimed innocently, seeing the hairy giant.
-I am The Ud, -said the giant, with a shrill and funny voice, which reminded him of the Japanese cartoon girls his son used to see.
-What is this, where am I? -he asked, backing up even further on the floor and trying to sit up.
-You are in my ship, tell me, what year is this? -asked the funny giant ape.
-Cousin, how can you not know what year it is, -he said, before laughing -shit, you really are ugly.
-What year is this? -said the giant creature again, now walking towards him, with a threatening gesture, that seemed to lose seriousness, before his peculiar appearance and funny voice.
-It's 2020, you brought me here no more than to ask me that question, -said Vicente trying to hold back his laughter.
-It's not time yet, -said the indifferent creature of the dazed fisherman.
He stretched out his hand, and in the face of a failed attempt by Vicente to avoid it, the enormous limb with only three fingers landed on the man's face, covering it completely and wrapping his fingers around his head. Vicente's sight became completely black, while he felt the weight of the hand on his head, the man felt that this lasted only a few seconds, when he no longer felt the pressure on his skull, he opened his eyes, hoping to see the strange creature again, but this time he was on the sand of the beach, sitting with his legs stretched out and his clothes gnawed, completely soaked in what he immediately knew was salt water.
Surprised, he stood up and looked around, his boat was lying on its side a few meters away from him and all his gear was inside, in the distance he could see his village and in it his house, the catire monkey, had left him back on the beach, and he did not even know how he had done it. He stood up and ran with difficulty through the sand until he reached his house, opened the door noisily and on the sofa in the living room, sitting in front of the TV, was his wife, watching what she thought was the midday news.
-Maria, you won't believe what happened to me! -he said, full of excitement.
-What a lie you're going to tell me, you motherfucker, where the fuck you've been these three days, - shouted his wife angrily, as she threatened him by waving a fist.
-Maria, I was kidnapped by a blond monkey, who spoke like a little girl and took me to his spaceship to ask me the date, -said Vicente innocently.
-Damn that shit, you're going to tell to your mother, great shit, you were drinking rum somewhere - shouted his wife, as she made him leave the house by slapping him on the back and head.
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White Hell
Rhonald got as close as he could to the heater, his sleepy hands were practically stuck to the grid of the device, the battery had almost run out; by the time this happened, only his thermal suit would protect him from the freezing temperatures of the Tetis polar ice cap.
An extensive layer of ice covered the north pole of the planet, by the inclination of the axis of rotation, this part of the globe, did not receive light from the cold red dwarf, during the whole year, reason why the ocean was frozen up to several tens of meters of depth.
Rhonald, pilot of a small exploration spacecraft, had fallen on the polar ice sheet of Tetis, during a mission of reconnaissance and monitoring of the terraformation systems, which were then adapting the planet for its habitability.
Completely alone, five light years away from the nearest emergency station, it now depended on the terraformation systems to detect its last emergency transmission and the IA to act by sending an information packet to the station to send a rescue mission.
Ten days after his accidental descent, his ship crumbled during the impact, leaving his remains scattered along two kilometers on the white ice layer. Fortunately, he was able to rescue the mission supply packs and the emergency heater, but after ten days, the heater's batteries were almost exhausted and the food had run out.
For the second time, he hit the grill of the appliance, uselessly hoping that it would cause it to emit more heat. His fingers, numbed and bruised by the cold, began to feel more like pieces of dead flesh than as part of his hands. He had not removed his boots since he arrived in that frozen hell, but he felt that, on his feet, something similar to what he could see in his hands was happening.
The thermal suit no longer seemed to be working, apparently, the few photons that arrived at that place, were not enough to recharge their batteries, so their dynamic air conditioning system had stopped working, and only the layers of insulating fabric that formed it and were insufficient to keep it warm on their own.
Now, with no source of heat and apparently no hope of receiving help, he felt that everything had come to an end, with nothing more to do, shaking violently and with all his muscles contracted, he stood up and began to walk from one side to the other aimlessly, simply trying uselessly to warm up his body. A great sensation of tiredness and drowsiness overwhelmed him, but he knew that he could not be overcome by sleep, not before finding how to warm up.
He walked along the line of impact, hoping to find something that would help him, when he arrived at the beginning, place where the ship hit the ice for the first time, he could find one of the small chemical fuel rockets, which were still used to slow down the escape capsules when he got to land, in some strange way he had gone to have there.
He leaned back from a large fragment of the fuselage that had remained in place and began to remove the thermal suit, for some reason that he did not know, he felt that it began to burn the body and it seemed to him that it would also be a good object to burn with the fuel of the rocket.
Dressed now only in his thin underwear, he placed the thermal mamluk on the ice and with his hole knife the fuel tank of the rocket, spilling the fuel gel, which even at such a low temperature, remained fluid, then, with the battery of his useless communicator which he had removed from the mamluk, before leaving it on the floor, and a couple of cables that he had difficulty pulling out of the circuits of the rocket, he managed, with difficulty, due to his hardened fingers, to ignite the fabric impregnated with fuel.
-We found him, sir, but his body was completely charred, -said the cadet, pointing in the direction of a large piece of fuselage from the sinister ship.
-How did it happen? -asked the leader of the rescue mission.
-It's hard to say, even his remains are smoking, -said the young man making a gesture of displeasure -. Apparently he tried to light a fire with fuel from a booster, and spilled it on him, when he lit it he burned himself. We found the rocket tank pierced. That seems to have happened a few hours ago.
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The Door to Hell
The slight gravitational pull of the bridge pulled Ricardo's ship towards its disturbing jaws, on its crystalline surface, orange and blue flashes could be distinguished, deformed like seen through a lens.
-Attentive, activate deflectors to the maximum and those who can fix targets from now on - an authoritative voice was heard to say, through the communicator -. Report Theta squadron, -said the same voice, seconds before entering the bridge.
-Theta four ready, deflectors at maximum, two targets set, - replied Ricardo, as he looked at the target indicators on the visor of his helmet.
The ship dived into the bridge, almost immediately, as soon as its hull began to appear on the other side, a mechanical impact projectile hit it, fragmenting itself into hundreds of pieces, violently shaking the fighter and taking Ricardo by surprise, who without losing concentration fired two charges of plasma that hit two ships located several tens of kilometers from the bridge.
They had just arrived at Cefeo's orbit, several thousand kilometers away was Castor one of the two space stations that had served as a refuge for millions of inhabitants who left the planet, before the persecution of the rebels, one of their rings was destroyed, apparently suffered the impact of a large object, probably one of several asteroids that the rebels had directed towards both stations, how many would have died from the impact, asked Ricardo.
-Attention Theta squadron, proceed as scheduled, advance to the planet's low orbit and destroy any enemy that gets in your way, -said the rude voice of the squadron leader in the statement.
As strange and violent flowers of amber color, the explosions of the destroyed ships, flashed everywhere, Ricardo managed to fix other three targets, of which he managed to impact two. How many of the destroyed fighters would have human pilots, the bodies of how many humans would float now, mutilated or dead by the void of space? How many still alive would die before being rescued? Expelled out of the battle area where they would never be found, he wondered as he maneuvered, trying to avoid, more by reflection, than by security, the shots of the enemy's short-range weapons.
In the midst of hundreds of debris from destroyed ships, probes and satellites, they entered the atmosphere of Cepheus, they had to enter the north of the continent and destroy the transmission station, whose location had been recently discovered, with it, they would break the communication of the rebel commanders, located in underground barracks, dispersed by several zones of the planet, with the combatants in orbit.
From the moment they entered the atmosphere they began to receive the impacts of the mechanical projectiles and the flashes of the plasma charges that, from the ground, fired the antiaircraft batteries of the rebels, one after the other the fighters of the Theta, Epsilon, Iota and Lambda squadrons were impacted and dismembered in the descent.
-Target the laser emitters and fire at will, ... -said the leader of the Theta squadron, just before being hit by a load of plasma, which overpassed its deflectors and destroyed the ship.
Ricardo swooped in the direction of the complex formed by one hundred laser emitters, which, to the untrained eye, would look like cannons or some other type of weapon, set targets, according to the lieutenant's last indication, and fired all the mechanical impact projectiles of his ship, along with a barrage of twenty plasma discharges.
Along with his own, a whole rain of fireballs descended in the direction of the emitters, fired by the other members of the squadrons. While from land, the anti-aircraft batteries continued attacking the ships and the multitude of projectiles that went towards them.
-Spread out now! -said Sergeant Ichikawa, next in command of the squadron.
After saying this, the few members of the Theta squadron who were still standing, broke the formation and dispersed in different directions.
After the jolt caused by the sudden change of speed and direction, Ricardo began to ascend again to meet his squadron, when a plasma discharge hit his reactor, a plasma flare went all over the ship, including the cabin, embracing it, and then causing it to explode into hundreds of fragments, which would fall into the sea, in front of the place where the rebels' transmission station used to be, now reduced by a little more than a hundred explosions to a pile of unrecognizable rubble.
Seventy percent of the squadron pilots sent from the Apollo contingent to destroy the Cepheus rebel transmission station perished during the operation, however, despite the large number of casualties, the objective was achieved and the destruction of the rebel facility led to its defeat in the Castor space station battle, which would be the last great battle of the Cepheus war, after it, several intelligence operations managed to stop or eliminate the rebel leaders, so this was definitely dismantled.
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Hay Fever
Anton opened his eyes and an intense glow mowed him, a soft but icy breeze sneaked through the interlining of his synthetic fiber overcoat and he felt his beauties bristle, when his vision cleared he could see a snowy forest, crowned with a sky darkened by what looked like black smoke, and he could hear what he thought were explosions and multiple detonations coming from his left.
He felt an intense itch in his nose, but even his desire to sneeze did not manifest itself, as it used to in the worst of times. He saw around him and realized that the detonations he was hearing were coming from among the trees, from the same place where the clouds of smoke were rising in the sky, and in the middle of them there were flashes and what he supposed were the shots of some kind of weapon that was unknown to him, and that emitted long discontinuous lines of flashes, while simultaneously there was a continuous tick-tock.
Suddenly he felt a heavy blow on his back that made him fall flat on his face to the ground, burying his face in the snow, accompanied by screams in a strange dialect that he had never heard before, as a reflection he stretched his arms out on the frozen ground, in a sign of surrender, a boot lightly hitting his arm accompanied by more unintelligible screams, which he assumed were ordering him to turn around.
He closed his eyes expecting the worst and turned, lying face up in the snow, felt a heavy boot leaning on his sternum and crushing him to the ground, fearfully raised his hands to show his empty palms to whoever was rebuking him, and slowly opened his eyelids.
A young man in perhaps his twenties, clad in a uniform almost as white as snow, pointed a strange, elongated weapon at him, the other end of which he held tightly against his shoulder, while with an expression, which he supposed to be as frightened as he must have been, he continued to shout at him in indecipherable language.
The young man withdrew the boot from his chest and took three or four steps backwards, while continuing to shout at him, then with the end of his weapon, with which he continued to point, he made a sign that seemed to identify him, signaling him to stand up.
Anton got up and standing up he could see his young counterpart more closely, it seemed to him that he was just a frightened boy with an unknown weapon, he was small and formed, about seventy kilograms and one meter eighty centimeters high, he supposed that one of the factors that could cause surprise to the young man was his two meters thirty, nothing strange in his world.
The boy's expression showed a clear panic, as he seemed to scrutinize him from top to bottom, pointing and holding the gun tightly against his shoulder. He shouted at him again and Anton raised his hands in front of his chest again, showing his palms to the frightened young man.
-Don't hurt me, I'm here by mistake -said Anton, hoping the boy would understand. But he only managed to make him seem more surprised and shout new, but still incomprehensible words at him.
The young man's thick white uniform contrasted with his reddened face, probably burned by the glare of the light from that bright star in the snow, it seemed much warmer than the summer overcoat that Anton wore, and it was crowned with a curious plush cap with a pair of earmuffs hanging down its sides, which he also covered with a hood attached to his jacket.
As the young man followed him around with his eyes, as he walked around him, Anton began to feel again the intense itching in his nose, which anticipated a new sneeze, he closed his eyes and inhaled the icy air that he felt burning his nostrils and throat and then came out violently through his mouth in a violent and loud sneeze.
When his eyesight and mind cleared again, he was standing in the corridor of his apartment, the bags containing his purchases were on the floor where they had fallen when he sneezed for the first time. He looked at the clock on the mirror panel to his right, and only a few seconds had passed between sneezes.
These experiences had already become frequent, after a violent sneeze he would wake up in a place and apparently a time which was unknown to him, as if he were being transported to strange worlds populated by humans who always seemed primitive, and then after sneezing again he would return to the same place and time where he had been before.
The neurologist had indicated to him that something was happening in his brain that had not yet been explained, possibly a malfunction of his nanomachines, which in addition to the experienced hallucinations also caused physiological manifestations such as pain, burns and bruises.
He took the bags again and walked to the kitchen, still dazed by his experience. He took off his envelope and hung it on a hook at the entrance to the kitchen and set out to store the contents of his bags in the pantry.
Behind him, a path of wet drops and footprints, left by the draining of the coat and his shoes, remained on the floor, starting at the place where he had sneezed for the first time, a product of the snow that had remained stuck to him and melted in the heat of his room.
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Origin
The main object could be seen in front, an amorphous rock about thirty meters in diameter, surrounded by smaller debris that made the task of maneuvering the ship almost impossible. Ivan gave up control to the AI and clung to the seat, while the ship began to make sudden movements, sideways or forward, accompanied by sudden stops, all in order to reach the largest of the fragments of that disintegrated and naked comet.
-Damn, it's hard to get used to this, -said Martha, as she clutched at the armrests of her seat, her head jerked back and forth, carried away by the movement of the ship.
-We are close now, only a few hundred miles more and we will have arrived- said Ivan, as he also shook sharply.
The little ship approached the biggest of the rocks and stood beside it, then from its belly four cables were shot out and anchored to the object.
-Ready, we are fastened, -said Ivan. -Who is coming down?
-Last time I did it, so it's your turn, -said Martha.
-But I brought us this far -said the pilot.
-The AI brought us this far, you just activated it.
With no argument for that, Ivan stood up and set out from the ship to take the samples from the comet to which he was attached.
-Damn it, why the hell don't we get some robot to do this, -he said furiously as he struggled into the airtight suit.
-Because the budget the Council gave us was barely enough for the ship and the analysis team, - answered Martha.
Minutes later Ivan would descend to the rock to which they were attached, and using a drill, he made several not very deep holes on its surface, collecting then the crushed particles that were extracted by the drill. After this, he floated a little above the surface and saw an area with a thin layer of ice, which he broke with a hammer from his tool belt, and then as he did with the rocks, he collected the frozen fragments in a container.
Back in the ship and after retiring in a suit and sitting in the pilot's seat again, he removed the ship's anchors and the AI took them away from the old comet and put them on a route to another body in the Oort nine.
-You have analyzed the samples, -he asked Martha who, an hour later, was again in the cockpit from the makeshift laboratory in the hold of the small cargo ship.
-Yes, like the previous thirty there are traces of hydrocarbons, amino acids, and other organic compounds, but nothing that we can connect even to the necessary molecules, -said the young biochemist.
-All right, the next then, -said Ivan, as they proceeded on their way to a new object.
After the end of the conflict with the Goeis and the return of the solar system to the domain of humans, there would be a rebirth of the interest of humans to know more about their original world and their environment, so, multiple investigations were financed by the parliament, through the academies of various worlds, with the purpose of knowing from the history of the solar system, to the processes that led to the generation of life and its evolution on Earth.
Thus, among many researchers of different origins, Martha Macias and Ivan Alexander, both students of the academy of Dione, proposed the hypothesis of proving panspermia, as the origin of the organic molecules that gave rise to life on Earth, for which, With the small budget allocated to them, they set out to search for these molecules on the surface of five hundred comets in the Oort cloud that, according to the simulations, had come close enough to the Earth to transfer them to its surface four billion years in the past.
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Rescue
The distress call had come in via the laser band about five hours ago, and it was strange for him that a ship should be in such a distant and uninteresting place as this. It dawned just above the coordinates indicated by the transponder signal and activated the depth sensors.
Indeed, there it was, a rescue capsule, for some reason the floats did not deploy, and the thing seemed too heavy to float. Around it, some of your hosts on this planet were swimming in wide circles around the object, apparently curious about it.
Fortunately for him it was not the clever boys from the depths with whom he had been working and living all this time, but the less clever ones, whose only desire always seemed to be to eat and snoop. Frankly, he was fed up with the constant scrutiny, he knew it was not bad intentioned, but he felt that all the time he was being watched, and he felt that he would end up hitting someone's bottle nose, if they asked him again if he wanted to go and play with the submersibles.
-Hello capsule LB343, can you hear me? -he asked, through the laser link-. This is Dr. Nicolas Pineda. I received your emergency call and came to help you -he continued, without receiving any response from the capsule.
He launched, from the ship, two submersible drones that dived and turned around the small escape vehicle, one of them peeked out of one of the hatches and could see an individual, dressed in a flight suit, operating the capsule's controls, as if trying to communicate.
Maybe he has problems with the transmitter, thought Nicolas and set about taking the vehicle out of the water, fortunately the ocean is shallow here, otherwise the pressure would have shattered it, these things are made to float, but for some reason it sank like a rock.
He threw a cable into the water and one of the drones grabbed it with its mechanical arm and then attached it to the cargo hook, which the capsule was equipped with, unfortunately it didn't have a levitation cargo platform, so the ship's winch would have to do.
The engine of the device shrieked and started to turn slowly and hardly between howling and whining. -Damn, what the hell is inside this thing, -said Nicolas to himself, as the winch continued to spin and the support rod arced slightly downwards like a fishing rod, under the unexpected weight of the capsule.
When he was on the floor of the cargo hold of his ship, he approached it and hit the escape hatch. -You can come out, - he shouted. -You are no longer under water, - he said, without reply.
He peered out of the hatch and could see how inside the ship the occupant, a thin, small man, still wearing his fireproof hood, was watching him warily from the pilot's chair. -Come on, my friend, get out, - repeated Nicolas, waving his hand -. Or you can't move - inside the pilot waved him to wait. He stood up and turned the lever to open the porthole, you could hear the air escaping from the interior of the capsule as its occupant came out.
Before the eyes of Nicolas, the thin and low pilot, he took off his hood, letting the delicate face of a young woman with short black hair and deep violet eyes be seen.-Hello, -said the beautiful woman without further explanation.
Nicolas, dazed by the revelation, felt as if his jaw had unraveled, and he could not close his mouth. - Do you feel well? -said the woman with an inquisitive look. Nicolas simply nodded his head and then, still not recovering from his stupor, pointed out the direction of the ship's cabin.
-If you like you can go into the cabin, I'll make some coffee, -he said in a clumsy voice -. But you'll have to make do with the generator, there hasn't been any real coffee in the supplies for several months, - he said, without looking away from the young woman, who saw him suspiciously as she passed by on her way to the direction indicated by Nicolas.
The young woman entered the booth and sat down at a table on the wall right next to the entrance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nicolas pass behind her in the direction of the generator, which was located at the front of the table.
-We don't get many human visitors around here, -said Nicolas, stuttering.
-I'm not visiting, remember, -she said-. I came here because my ship exploded half a million kilometers from this planet -she said, while she was drinking the cup that Nicolas placed in front of her-. What did you say your name was?
-I am Nicolas Pineda, I am here doing research on the dolphin society, - explained Nicolas, as his voice became clearer -And you, what is your name?
-Daria, -she said, sipping some of the steaming coffee-. Are you a scientist, then, a biologist or something?
-Astroarchaeologist, - he replied- I study intelligent alien societies, although in this case it is not an extraterrestrial culture, it is as if it were, given the conditions.
-What do you mean by conditions, they are dolphins, they are animals, -she answered intrigued- Why would an archaeologist study animals?
Daria, seemed to ignore the peculiarity of the world where she was, it was Ilmatar, the planet that Parliament had designated as the world for the Ilmatians, dolphins evolved in space, which had developed much more complex rationalization skills than their congeners from Earth, and had been considered creatures with advanced intellectual abilities and placed as another form of intelligent life.
The young woman listened attentively to Nicolas' long explanation, who seemed to lose track of time, as he detailed the society the dolphins had formed and explained their rituals and social customs, as well as detailing his own tiredness and feelings of loneliness and abandonment for being the only human on the planet for more than three years.
After explaining more about his society, his story went on to describe the apprehension he had begun to feel for his hosts, who, although they were excessively hospitable, had already begun to tire him with their empty conversations and the continuous desire to play and eat, in addition to their continuous interest in observing him and the countless ways of referring to water and its different characteristics.
-And if you feel so tired of all this, why don't you go away? -she said, suddenly breaking her attentiveness, and casting a look of compassion on her.
-I wish I could, -said Nicolas, with helplessness in his eyes-. I received a grant for a five-year investigation, I must comply with it or I will lose my academic position and perhaps even be accused and forced to return the credits I was given.
-I understand, -she said-. I pity you.
-Don't worry, at least I can eat all the fresh fish I want, -answered Nicolas laughing shyly.
It was then that a signal was activated on the ship's instrument panel, Nicolas got up from the chair where he had been sitting for the last hour and approached to see what was happening.
-Excuse me, but so far I realize that I have almost an hour talking about what I am doing here, -he said as he sat in the pilot's chair and looked at the instrument panel, which indicated the presence of three ships approaching the planet. -Uh, it seems that several army patrol ships are approaching, I suppose they detected your distress signal and are coming to get you, -he commented-. I never asked you, what happened to your ship and where were you going?
After saying these words, Nicolas felt an intense pain that started in his neck and spread all over his body, making him lose his senses.
When he opened his eyes he was lying on his cot in the cabin of the ship and Daria was sitting next to him, watching him with a sweet look.
-I'm sorry that I had to electrocute you, but I didn't have time to explain myself to you, -said the beautiful woman.
-What happened, what do you mean you electrocuted me? -said Nicolas stuttering.
-When my ship crashed I was running away from the army, -she said, leaning forward in her chair-. I am a pirate and a smuggler, and I had just stolen a cargo of iridium from a Parliament transport going to Atlas.
-But... -Nicolas stammered, dumbfounded by the confession.
-You remember that my capsule sank instead of floating in the ocean, -said Daria, under Nicolas' incredulous gaze-. Well, it's loaded with two hundred ingots, right under my pilot's chair.
-But why did you electrocute me? I wouldn't have said anything, -he said.
-Maybe, I don't know, but the army was coming, so I had to improvise quickly, -she explained. -But look on the bright side, you already have an excuse for leaving the planet of the dolphins, you can say you were kidnapped by a pirate.
The ship, commanded by Daria had left the planet, crossed one of the bridges into nothingness, evading the army ships and taking Nicolas away from his burdensome responsibilities.
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Terraformation Tales - The Last Visit
That afternoon I sat on the sand and watched the second star rise over the horizon, two dawns in one day, not all the time, only once every fifteen years, when the smaller star is close enough to illuminate the sky, beyond being a single point, brighter than the other stars of the night.
It was my last inspection, before the order of colonization, it was my custom to give a final visit, to breathe the air of the planet, before the arrival of the settlers, I would be the first person who would do it and the last one to see this world still virgin, with no more humans than me on its soil.
I had already made a tour of several places around the planet and was getting ready to leave, but before that I sat down for the first and last time on one of its beaches, it was a long coastline, to the east of the continent with a wide strip of black sand, originated from the already extinct volcanoes that were now covered by green forests, growing at its feet and on its slopes.
This was the first world with a binary star that was terraformed; the orbit of the second star moved it so far away from the main star that its gravitational effect on the planet was almost imperceptible, and gave it the additional addition of a tiny sun that every fifteen years adorned, for a few months, the evenings of the planet, just when the main star was already to the west and its brightness did not overshadow it.
As I stood up, still haunted by the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks and the squawking of the seagulls flying over the vicinity, in search of fish, I could see out of the corner of my eye, how, a strange figure, slipped across the water on its way to the beach, I turned around in surprise to see what it was all about and I could not make out anything around me.
I would have sworn that a female figure had passed by me, but that was not possible, apart from me, there was no other human being in this world. A strange sensation ran through my body, suddenly the peace that this world generated in me, turned into anguish and melancholy and a chill went up my arms and back.
Overwhelmed by the sensation, I felt that it would be best to leave, I had a long time without sleep, and the fatigue must be affecting my senses. During the journey to Heracles, to give my report, I could rest and recover.
I walked among the tall trees, which separated the beach from the location of my ship, and as I advanced, the feeling of anguish persisted, aggravated now, by the impression that I was being watched.
It was then that I saw her, this time there was no doubt about it, the thin and lanky figure of a woman, dressed in a light and long dress, completely white, ran in front of me through the trees.
I ran in the direction in which I saw her running away, screaming, asking her to stop, asking how she had gotten there; but again she disappeared from my sight, lost in the trees. I continued to advance, calling out to her, asking her to come out from where she was, but only the sound of the wind in the trees was my response.
I walked to where a stream of almost transparent water made its way through the vegetation and again, on the other side, I saw the figure, which, dodging, ran, as if trying to hide, into the forest. I crossed the shallow waters with two long strides and continued my run after the mysterious woman.
After walking aimlessly for several minutes, I reached a clearing in the middle of the forest, an almost circular region, where only grass was growing, but here, it was a more intense green than it seemed in the rest of the forest, and there I found her again, she was a slender woman, standing in the middle of the clearing, with long black hair, which contrasted with her white dress. She had her back to me, looking westward, just towards the mountains, which marked the end of the coast and hid a vast plain, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers, inside the continent.
I approached her, again asking her, in a loud voice, about her presence in that place, but I did not receive any reaction from her, she just stood there, not even turning around to where I was, I felt a buzz on my wrist, and I raised her at the height of my eyes, to meet the warning signal from my electronic assistant, soon the main star would start hiding and it would be time to leave to stay within the schedule.
When I looked away from the assistant, again the woman had disappeared, there was no way she could have left, she could not run or hide, the only way she could have left was by literally disappearing. In the place where she had been standing, a rose bush was growing with dozens of white roses, which before would have been hidden behind her figure.
Dazed by that I returned to the ship, fatigue had played dirty tricks on me, that could not have been more than a trick of my mind, a simple illusion product of exhaustion. Almost at nightfall I set out on my way, I left that world, even without a name, on my way to Heracles, determined to omit my last experience, in my report to the colonization commission. But the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that something had happened, that I could not have imagined that, it was then that I remembered it; roses have never been included in the process of terraformation, their crops are always brought by the colonists, how did that rose bush get there?
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The Treasure of Talos
Long rows of old and dilapidated buildings, covered with rust, stretched as far as the eye could see. In their windows, rotten blinds were shaking, shaken by the intense and cold breeze that swept the desert sand around that ruin, which was once the largest of Hephaestus' mining towns.
-Are you sure this is it? -said Romina, dropping her heavy rucksack on the floor -. I can't walk any more, we had to rent a slider.
-Come on Romina, we have to go on -said Giovanna, stretching out to pull her partner-. It will soon be dawn and the day will begin to heat up, and you know how much the temperature rises at this time of year.
-How much longer till we get there?. -Romina asked.
-We are close, according to the positioning system we are half a kilometre away, -she said, pointing in the direction of two twin buildings, located at the end of the street they were walking -. It must be in the central square, in front of those two towers, it must be down there.
Romina reluctantly lifted her heavy rucksack and they continued to advance through the dusty streets of the ruined city.
Talos, was for a little over two thousand years, the main industrial and mining center of Hephaestus, several dozens of companies manufacturing mechanisms, nanomachines and engines, for all types of buildings, had their main headquarters in the now abandoned and rusty buildings. Even the Consortium, the largest technological corporation that has ever existed, had its origin in these old ruins.
-These are the exact coordinates, -said Giovanna, looking at the positioner flashing on her bracelet-. According to the old man, we should dig here about five meters and we should find it.
-Well, I'll assemble the excavator, you install the power source- -Romina said, dropping the backpack on the ground again -. It's a relief to get this off my chest -she said -. You still haven't explained to me where you got the information.
-Ten years ago, I worked for a few months servicing the machines in a homeless shelter, -she explained, as she took out of her backpack the source of batteries to run the excavator, which her partner was unpacking-. There I met an old man, about nine hundred years old, named Leonard or at least that's what he told me, he liked to flirt with me and tell me about his past glories, he said that in his youth he had been part of the Grim Reaper.
-The Grim Reaper, what's that? -Interrupted Romina, as she adjusted the denturbation roller of the excavator.
-It was an old mafia, which had its territory between Heracles, Niobe and Hephaestus, they were traffickers and smugglers, they were not really a big deal, they could not attract much attention, being under the very nose of the Parliament, -explained Giovanna-. The Niobe police arrested most of their leaders about five hundred years ago and they ended up disintegrating into small, unimportant gangs, just a few small-time criminals.
-You said he was an old man of about nine hundred, what was he doing in a shelter, at that age he couldn't be that bad, -Romina asked.
-He hadn't had an easy life, it seems, the crime didn't pay off with him, because his nanobots were almost depleted, and he was over three hundred years old that he didn't get an upgrade, plus he was addicted to THC, in short, he was finished.
-I understand, but you haven't finished telling me how you found out about this place -interrupted Romina.
-You didn't let me explain either -said Giovanna, and then she turned on the power source and saw how the excavator started to turn its roller while emitting an annoying buzz -. The old man told me that on one occasion he and several of his comrades had to flee from the Hephaestus police and take refuge in the ruins of Talos, there, while hiding in the basement of an old factory, they found it, and thought of hiding it from the police so that they could come later and sell it on the black market.
-And why, if they found him in a basement, are we here digging? -Romina said.
-Because we are over that basement, she said, as they moved away to make room for the excavator to do its work-. Look around, there are fifteen buildings and all of them must have extensive basements below, I don't know which one the entrance is, but the old man, in one of his THC delusions, told me the coordinates of the place where he was.
-So here we are, after walking several miles in the middle of the night, carrying two heavy backpacks, for leaving the ship behind the hills, to avoid being detected by the patrols, only to dig in the place that an old addict, sick and probably insane, told you was buried - said Romina, raising her voice.
-That's right, and be quiet, we don't know when the patrols can start their rounds, it's going to be dawn soon - said Giovanna.
-Damn, 'cause I always follow you around in your craziness.
The excavator moved around drawing a circle while expelling the earth around it. After ten minutes a deep circular hole five meters deep was in front of the two women.
-Well, it's done, let's go down then and get it over with, -said Romina. Both dropped into the hole and continued to dig with shovels, until they hit the slab of what could be the roof of the basement they were looking for.
Using a plasma torch they opened a hole in the roof and entered a large room, crowded with old, rusty metal containers, abandoned shelves and old, possibly useless machines, right under the hole they had opened was a dirty old black polymer container.
-This must be it, it's right under the coordinates the old man said, -said Giovanna.
-It seems it was true then, -said Romina-. Let's open it up and see if it has what he told you.
Romina took an extendable bar from one of the pockets of her overalls and used it to pry open the container's zipper without putting up much resistance.
They lifted the thin but hard lid of the container and inside was just what the old man had said. Carefully arranged in several layers, which were piled up to the bottom of the box, were about five hundred small containers, five by five centimeters, each containing a tiny device called Accela, a neuronal stimulator, which implanted in the skull of a person, was able to simulate in the brain, the same effect of several types of recreational drugs, according to the wishes of its carrier.
Accela was once sponsored by Parliament, as part of research into the effects of some drugs, but then, given its potential, it was produced en masse by several unscrupulous laboratories, due to the legal vacuum over its distribution. Finally, Parliament banned its distribution and it was completely withdrawn from the market.
A few containers, like the one in front of Giovanna and Romina, had survived, but most of them were destroyed by the same gangs of traffickers, due to the "unfair" competition for their products. That is why, now, more than a thousand years after its almost total disappearance, the existence of Accela was almost a myth, one that, if true, would have great value on the black market.
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Argos
Marcos sat down on the floor, to try to catch his breath, he had been running around for almost thirty minutes, trying to find a capsule and they had all been ejected, at most he had a couple of hours left before Argos began to be disintegrated. Panting, he stood up and amidst the alarms and the voice of the warning system, which notified of the impending disaster, he continued to run through the corridors, it was likely that on the second level, where the cargo bays were located, there were still some capsules in operation.
It arrived from Bellerophon ten days before the notification of the evacuation due to structural risks. Thirty-three days had already passed and only seven remained for the maximum period of evacuation.
On his arrival, he had been assigned to the hull reconstruction division, but shortly afterwards, representatives of the Parliament's Industrial Facilities Safety Committee carried out an inspection, after it was revealed in a report by a well-known Heracles journalist, that the operating conditions in Argos were critical and they decided that the best thing to do was to suspend operations so that it could be reconditioned.
After the eviction order was known, he was assigned to the closure of the operations of the smelters' furnaces and then of the gravity system's rotational motors, but two days ago he had been reassigned to the closure of the core of the antimatter reactor, which provided power to the entire station.
The reactor was a monster, capable of generating as much energy per minute as required by a world like Bellerophon for an entire year. In its early days, it could cover all the requirements of the one hundred smelting furnaces, three hundred shipyards and the thirty thousand rooms that housed the more than ninety thousand workers, as well as the facilities needed to provide them with services.
Argos was the largest of the two hundred shipyard space stations created during the glory of the Persian era, when even the Parliament had not located its headquarters in Herakles and partially ruled the colonies from Perseus, when even the war in Cepheus had not yet broken out.
It had already been operating for more than four thousand years and its conditions had deteriorated considerably, even to the point of forming micro cracks in the outer shell of its reactor.
That morning, Marcos was in charge of sealing the operation of the reactor's 15th maintenance sector. He only had to perform a routine in the maintenance computer and then close the sector's bulkhead door and seal it by welding its frame.
Once he executed the closing routine, he closed the door and activated the welding robot to perform the final work, but while the device was doing its job, behind the door one of the micro-cracks in the shell enlarged and started a chain reaction that ended up generating the explosion and detachment of a fragment of the shell, which shot out breaking the bulkhead and letting a jet of steam at high temperature escape.
Marcos was run over by a fragment of the bulkhead and was unconscious while the steam came out of the fissure. Fortunately for him, the metal fragment that hit him also served as a barrier to protect him from the impact of the steam jet; thus avoiding him from suffering serious burns, limited to only some minor ones, on his face and hands.
When he managed to recover from the blow, he saw that the sector where he was was closed, and that the evacuation alarms were active, fortunately the emergency system opened the hermetic door and let him out into the exit corridor, where he started his wander in search of an escape capsule.
Apparently all of them had already left the ship, possibly he had been left for dead during the accident, hundreds of capsules had been launched, almost all of them with their maximum load of evacuees, but the computer of his personal information unit, indicated him that there were still capsules that had not been expelled, however, he had not been familiarized yet with the location of them, according to his code and the information unit did not provide it to him.
After visiting the shipyards and the residential area, he went down to the second level, where the loading bays for the supplies for the operations were located. Few people used to work there, and since the operations were being suspended, supplies were no longer being received, so his workers would probably have been reassigned to level one to work at the operations stop.
As soon as he arrived at the level two evacuation area, he found that the first three capsules had been used, but the fourth one in the line was still available. He climbed in and closed the door, not believing it was necessary to wait for others, as it seemed that everyone had already left. He sat down in the control chair, fastened his seatbelts tightly and activated the ejection lever, a one-minute countdown began, after which the capsule was violently ejected compressing Marcos against his seat and leaving him unconscious for a few minutes.
Marcos woke up, freed himself from the belts and floated up to one of the capsule's portholes where he saw it approaching a group of others floating in space in the designated rescue area. He circled around, looking through all the portholes, until he reached one from which the Argos station could be seen, and in the background the red dwarf star orbiting around it began to break off large fragments that began to burn as it approached the star's corona.
That had been the end of Argos, one of the last and largest space station shipyards ever built, and one of the most glorious achievements of the ancient age of Perseus.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/estaci%C3%B3n-espacial-asteroide-5845296/
Fall to the Void
In the depths of space there are immeasurable terrors of cruelty, it is one of the first things you learn when you start at the parliament's pilots' academy, although piloting a ship, capable of moving between the different worlds that make up the human expansion region of the galaxy is a task that almost anyone with a minimum of technical knowledge could do, thanks to the fact that flight is almost fully automated, and parliament's safety devices work very effectively when emergencies arise; this does not work in many unexplored regions or where terrifying objects hide in the dark, waiting to fatally catch the unsuspecting.
Neutron stars or magnetars, hidden in the middle of dense nebulae, waiting to crush or disintegrate any object that comes close enough to them. Clouds of incandescent gas, in which incredible magnetic fields are capable of destroying the instruments of ordinary ships and leaving them adrift. Matter-devouring black holes, hidden in the darkness of space, or surrounded by incandescent accretion discs, where matter is accelerated to speeds similar to light while burning at inconceivable temperatures.
But these terrors pale in the face of the most improbable and commonplace of the risks of piloting a ship which may move at inconceivable speeds, the terror of the effects of relativity, and the greatest and most horrible of these, the dilation of time. The quality that time has, for an external observer, of moving more slowly as a moving object approaches the speed of light.
During the first stellar journeys of the Perseus era, when the ships moved at fractions of the speed of light, this problem was not very relevant, if there was dilation, but it was not so appreciable, hardly noticing differences of minutes or even hours between the time of the traveler and the spectators, however when the ships were getting faster this problem became more worrying, arriving to differences of days or weeks.
But when the technological leap was made from the sub-light impulse engines to those of space-time impulse, this problem was completely corrected, since the latter managed to surpass the speed of light by far, without violating relativity and without the effect of time dilation, since in practice it is not the ship that moves, but the space-time around it, which, like a wave, propels it at speeds that today, more than twenty-three thousand years after its creation, can theoretically surpass, in some military ships, up to four thousand times that of light.
When you think about this, you feel a false sense of security, that nothing can go wrong, that relativity is there to help you travel faster and farther than you ever could. It is when you trust this, that again the monsters that lurk in the darkness have the opportunity to take advantage of your lack of caution.
This is how I got here, crossing the hergosphere of a black hole, just at the moment when the space-time impulse of my ship failed, condemning me to spin at speeds that, in the eyes of an external observer, would be higher than those of light, at the limit of the event horizon of this matter-eating monster. While for me, time advances normally, the universe outside my gravity prison, advances as if it were a movie advanced at an immeasurable speed.
As I float, tied by the umbilical cord to my ship, in a last desperate attempt to get the momentum going again, I think of how long I have been here and how much has happened out there, for me it has been several days already, my controls indicate that only twelve have passed, but when I failed the system and was captured by gravity my speed was more than a hundred times that of light, so for the universe outside of here it has been thousands of years already.
Overwhelmed by my situation, I wonder if it is not better to let my orbit fall and finally be caught by the horizon of events, to lose myself in the abyss of its absence of space time, where everything known loses meaning, to sink into its unknown depths. But the morbid need to know, what I once knew has become, pushes away fatalistic thoughts, motivating me to keep trying to escape.
After two days of work, and sacrificing several security devices, I managed to reactivate the space-time impulse engine, my computer has calculated my absence from reality in forty-nine thousand years, what universe will it find, how will the humans of this time be, how much will we have expanded in the galaxy, my curiosity will soon be irremediably satisfied.
After igniting the impulse, I manage to break the gravity bonds of the black hole's hergosphere and my ship manages to quickly move away from its influence. Relieved, but at the same time distressed, I set out for Heracles, where, when I left my time, was the seat of parliament and the headquarters of the exploration division, where I was to report.
I had to cross two bridges whose monitoring stations were not where they should be, I assumed they were removed and replaced by some sort of device, which was completely unknown to me and undetectable by my ship's sensors.
When I got to Heracles, the first thing I noticed when I approached, was the absence of radio emissions in any band, they would have been completely eliminated as a way of transmitting information, what new technologies would have been used? I approach the planet, I descend into its atmosphere and there is nothing; what was once a world that, even before the arrival of humans, was brimming with life, with extensive and dense forests, was now a huge desert of completely transparent skies, without a single cloud in sight, its once vast ocean had completely disappeared, apparently all its water had disappeared, leaving only a barren rock, where before there was a beautiful world.
Thus I began my wanderings in this new universe, whose nature is completely unknown to me. Palas, Dione, Amphitrite, The Earth, Cerberus, Atlas, all abandoned, some still preserved ruins of cities that were once populated by millions of people, others were unrecognizable, completely flooded or frozen and in all of them stood out a complete absence of man, where did everything I once knew go, where did humanity go?
Perhaps it would have been better to let myself fall into the horizon of events.
The Return of the Emperors
-Twenty-five years ago, this whole place was a real mess, -said Sofi, as she adjusted the balaclava over her mouth-. Damn, the cold is awful.
-Thank you for not being in Cerberus, your ears can fall off if you leave them exposed for more than five seconds, - answered Lidia, watching her companion shake the snow off her thick coat.
They continued to walk around the white dome that covered much of the frozen landscape, further ahead they stopped in front of a bronze plaque attached to the thick wall of the building.
-Well, here we are, let's make it quick so we can get back before my ears fall off, -said Sofi.
Lidia shook the plate with her gloved hand to remove the snow and uncover its surface, stood beside it and pulled out her balaclava.
-Ready, do it now, before I lose my ears, -she said smiling and assuming her best pose.
-Enough of that please, - said Sofi, raising her communicator and pointing it in Lidia's direction -. Ready, we can go now.
-Let me see, -said Lidia taking the device-. I never thought I would look so good in a ten-pound thermal suit.
-Of course you look better in that than in a bathing suit, can we go now? -said Sofi Sardonic.
On the way to the coast they saw a line of emperor penguins walking towards the sea.
-Look how beautiful they look, -said Lidia- What are they, I had never seen them before.
-They are female emperor penguins, they only live here and on a few other planets, - replied Sofi, guiding the slider.
-And how do you know they're female? -asked Lidia.
-Because they go to the sea for food.
-And what, the males don't eat, they expect to be served lunch -said Lidia.
-Something like that, do you want to see? -said Sofi, deviating the course without waiting for an answer.
A few kilometers away, in the direction of the origin of the line, in the middle of a plain, where the wind was blowing hard, an army of about two hundred penguins was standing stoically, resisting the intense cold.
They stopped the slider at a prudential distance and observed with binoculars the curious scene.
-What the hell are they doing, they're just standing there, freezing -asked Lidia, surprised at what she saw.
-It's the males, adjust the zoom so you can see in detail -Sofi replied.
Lidia did what her partner told her to do and looked at a couple of them carefully -. Oh damn, what is that? -she said, when she saw how from between the legs of one of them a small chick was appearing, almost completely white in face, decorated with a small beak.
-They care for the eggs and the young, while the females look for food, -said Sofi-. They stand there on their nests for weeks, warming the eggs and chicks, until they are mature enough.
-Damn that's beautiful... and strange -Lidia said.
-Their population was reduced long after the attack on the radio station; the bombing was not accurate, because it did not detect with precision the origin of the signal, the army used a fission bomb, which destroyed part of their ecosystem and killed an immense number,
-So cruel -commented Lídia.
-Its population is just beginning to recover -said Sofi-. Let's go back before nightfall.
Later, in the boat, on the way to the port of the southern peninsula, Lídia was observing her photograph in front of the plate of the dome.
"Zone zero of the attack on the Penguin Bay communications station.
Day 33, month 6, year 534 of Cepheus.
This dome keeps the area contaminated by radiation, generated by the explosion of a fission device, used to destroy a communications station, used to guide the attack on the Castor and Pollux space stations, where 832,534 refugees from Cepheus perished".
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/ping%C3%BCino-beb%C3%A9-ant%C3%A1rtica-la-vida-429125/
Infection
It started without notice, there were no isolated cases, which could be analyzed and evaluated, before it got out of control. There were no cities or towns where small outbreaks occurred that would allow for hypotheses about their origin or courses of action to contain them. There was no patient zero, no prevention was possible, it took all the epidemiological warning systems by surprise, it attacked in silence and from the beginning, it was like a runaway beast, which invested everything that stood in its way.
Even today it is not known where it came from and because it stopped, it could only attack its symptoms, in those who were affected. It happened in Phaeton, a distant mining world, two days after the start of the storm season, where its inhabitants, nearly one hundred million, lived together in fifty-three cities, where there were also three hundred and fifty million robots, which were in charge of domestic work, services and deep mining.
The first documented case occurred in Minerva 1, the capital city of the planet. It involved a young man from the academy who had to be taken to the hospital in an emergency with acute respiratory syndrome and cardiac arrest. No more than three hours later, at Minerva 13, more than two thousand kilometers away, the second and third cases would occur. With similar symptoms, a worker from the mine administration and a woman who worked in the public administration had to be hospitalized after collapsing, in places far from the city. By the end of the day, more than 500 cases had been reported throughout the northern hemisphere.
The ships that had left from Phaeton and had not reached their destination were detained and quarantined, in orbit around the worlds or stations to which they were heading, and all those who had traveled from the planet and reached their destination in the last ten days were detained and subjected to rigorous medical evaluations, on the worlds where they were. But the contagion never left Phaeton.
There was no known pathogen, no bacteria or fungus, no virus or prion, no chemical or radioactive agents were sought, but none were found.
It would be believed that a society in which individuals are implanted from birth with cell regeneration and infection-fighting nanomachines would be protected against this type of event, but the contagion began precisely there, it was the medical nanomachines, the first to be affected by their action.
It was when the first robot became ill that the cause of the problem could be discovered, a strange form of life similar to a bacterium, but with a mutated form of nanomachine coupled to its internal structure, as if it were an organelle, which was responsible for the infection. Years after the contagion ended, exomicrobiologists from Dione's academy would categorize it as the first known symbiotic cybernetic life form that has formed naturally.
The cyberpathogen, as it was called, or CP20434 to the researchers, was formed in the upper layers of the atmosphere, where among the thousands of transformation nanomachines that still performed their work of purifying the ancient atmospheric gases, decomposing their molecules into carbon dioxide and oxygen, one mutated and for some reason, still unknown, combined with a bacterium. Several hundred of these mutated nanomachines were discovered in samples taken from the planet's atmosphere and proved to be completely inert on their own.
The microorganism attacked both the natural and cybernetic immune systems of humans and the robot repair nanomachines alike, reproducing on a scale far greater than any known microorganism. Once the host's defenses were over, it began to attack the cells of the lung and heart walls in humans and the muscle membranes in robots, after which it seemed to slow down its reproduction rate, until it was filtered out by the kidneys and excreted completely, this in the case of humans. In the case of robots, after destroying the muscle membranes, completely damaging the motor functions, it ended up dying and disappearing.
In a little less than thirty-six hours, after the symptoms began, the disease ceased and if the patient had resisted, he could receive a new dose of nanomachines and begin his recovery. However, if the dose of nanomachines was administered before the pathogen was completely expelled from the body, its action would be reactivated, giving rise to a new wave of symptoms that, because of the situation the patient was already in, was usually fatal.
The vector that allowed the transmission of the disease was never known, the most accepted hypothesis is that those infected had been exposed during the first rains of the season and that these transferred the microorganisms from the atmosphere. This could be demonstrated when the presence of the microorganism was found in the wells formed by the rains in the rock fields outside Minerva 1.
Even today, mutated nanomachines can be found in Phaeton's atmosphere, but the pathogen has never been found again and no new cases have occurred. After infecting more than twelve million humans and one hundred and twenty million robots, and causing the death of four million people and the need to replace the entire motor system of all infected robots, today, more than two hundred years after the epidemic, the inhabitants of Phaeton are still hiding from the rains, when the season starts, and the work in the mines, as well as any activity in the cities stops and the isolation vacations begin, until the storms stop.
Panspermia
The water was clearer than usual, it seems that the storm had helped to clean it up, usually a lot of particles among minerals, algae and terraforming nanomachines, reduced the visibility at this depth.
Lucien advanced a few more kilometers in the submersible, observing how small blue-green algae began to grow attached to the underwater floor, which was mainly made up of rocks and quartz.
"Here it is", he thought when he saw it, the place that the computer of terraformation had pointed out to him, three pillars of rock were raised where it had happened, probably the impact was so violent that made the magma of the mantle sprout, in this region of the planet the crust was very thin.
It was possible to see a small bulge in the middle of the three pillars that indicated the place of occurrence of the event, it approached and took some of ours of the water, that immediately introduced in the unit of analysis, in effect LUCILE had not been mistaken, in fact they seem never to be mistaken.
-Have you confirmed my reading, environmental engineer Lucien Rivera -heard LUCILE's unmistakable voice, saying over the loudspeaker.
-Yes LUCILE, there is no doubt about your result, - he answered.
He extended the arms of the submersible and using the excavator, broke the layer of vitrified rock that covered the bulge, in the middle of the pillars, to take samples. There was a whole layer of material different from what would normally be found at that depth.
-Here is the cause, LUCILE -he said when he saw the results of the analysis unit-. This is a meteor.
-I already knew that, environmental engineer, -said the smug LUCILE.
-Yes, but this one in particular seems to have some bacteria of terrestrial origin, -he replied.
After Lucien's last visit to the planet, three hundred years ago, a relatively small bolide had crashed several kilometers off the northern coast of the continent, in a shallow region. Years later, LUCILE, after taking samples from the area, found the abnormal presence of bacteria that had not been planted on the planet.
The proliferation of humans in this sector of the galaxy, in its constant wandering through space, has left biological material dispersed in different places, and it was becoming more and more frequent to detect bacteria, algae and other forms of microscopic life, capable of surviving in the vacuum of space, which were transferred to previously sterile planets, after the impact of meteorites.
Now, life, once confined to Earth, was spreading unwittingly throughout the galaxy.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/planeta-alien%C3%ADgena-exoplaneta-oc%C3%A9ano-583719/
The Last Hostel
There it was, Parnassus, the last hostel, the last resting place of the traveler, the last place of calm in a galaxy victim of entropy, since the fall of the human reign, our presence was no longer welcome anywhere, not even if the Inus were now sheltering us, in their already scarce operative nodes. Only the security and impartiality of Parnassus allows some peace to the few of us left in this dark and dying universe.
In a world illuminated only by the remaining heat of a white dwarf, one of the few that still shines, in the middle of a desolate and frozen steppe, its three gloomy buildings stand, as the only sign of life on the whole planet, illuminated by the almost exhausted energy coming from one of the last micro fusion reactors, still in operation, a forgotten technology, in a universe where almost all the hydrogen has been exhausted, after the end of the last stars.
In front of the building, seven ships, all of them different, were stopped. Apparently, today there were more guests than usual, especially for an almost uninhabited galaxy. I descended next to an old and dilapidated Cintar ship, far away from its old domains I thought, on the other side of the central lobe of the galaxy, where not even the white dwarfs shine anymore, where light and heat are things of the past.
I came down from the ship, sheathed in my dirty and worn-out airtight suit, although the thin atmosphere was breathable, the intense cold would have frozen me, like an ugly ice statue, just by stepping on the ground, without the proper insulation.
As I entered, I could see that only three of the twelve tables were occupied, apparently only by lonely travelers like me, no groups of migrants, escaping to warmer places. The Cintar, with his voluminous body of three meters of height and almost four hundred kilos, was seated on the biggest of the tables, in front of him, a huge banquet of vegetables and meat of protel, coming out of a generator, was noisily devoured, by his horrible mouth, similar to an anus of twenty centimeters, located in the middle of what could be his chest.
I walked beside him, not paying much attention, these ghouls used to get angry, when they were seen with much interest, and it was not at all pleasant to discuss with a creature the size of a mountain, the aspect of a sea cucumber and that was shouting incomprehensible words, for an ugly mouth that reeks of the same as it looks.
I went to the bar, also ignoring the Dolotian and the Predor, who occupied the other tables, their species were too new, to be of danger, even being a pariah to the galaxy, belonging to one of the oldest species still standing, had its advantages, one of them, that nothing seemed to be new to you, while being one of the few humans that exist also makes you the center of attention wherever you go, often in an undesired way.
I approached the bar and the Taraxian-shaped robot generator, which was attending to it, he asked me, with a horrible Persephone accent and in an already forgotten human dialect, which he wanted to take.
-Give me the closest thing you have to a barley beer, but please don't let it be that strange brew of the Perdomitas, and let it be cold, I hate hot beer -I told it.
After some squealing and buzzing, the robot handed me a glass mug, filled with a crystalline yellow liquid, covered with a thin layer of foam; at least it looks good, I thought as I looked at it.
I turned off the visor on my helmet and took a sip from the jug, it wasn't the best, but it wasn't as bad as I would have hoped, I reloaded from the bar and continued drinking.
-You serve me something to eat, the closest thing you have to human food, please -I said to the robot and went to sit at a table, with the beer mug in my hand.
As I sat down, in the generator of the table, a bowl of vegetable and crab broth and a plate of pureed peas materialized, accompanied by what appeared to be a glazed pork rib. I did not think that things like this could be obtained even from a generator, I thought that the only thing humans could aspire to was a strange and insipid potingue similar to a cream of vegetables, with a few suspicious meat sticks.
I ate the broth quickly, so that I could continue with the meat, trying to raise my eyes as little as possible, to avoid seeing the monstrosity that ate enormous quantities of vegetables in front of me. How could it stink so much if its diet was almost entirely made up of vegetables?
When I finished eating, I got up and went to the lobby, to request a room where I could take off my suit and take a hot bath. I was already tired of sleeping on a cot that was fifty centimeters wide and rubbing myself with a sponge in my ship. The employee, a pale, weak Taraxian, looked at me in amazement, I assumed he had never seen a human before.
-Give me a room with a bed and shower, boy," I said.
-Of course, we have suitable rooms for you, - he answered me in a loud dialect of the southern Taraxis -. You know, I am new here, the boss told me that humans rarely come, but this is the third one I see today, I never thought I would see so many of you in my life and even less together.
-Are there any more humans here?
-Yes, they have the room next to yours, they are two of your females I think, they arrived together this morning, after eating they went into their room and have not come out since.
After hearing some other stories from the Taraxian charlatan, I went up to my room, as expected the light was more intense than it should be, but at least the temperature was adequate and the water in the shower was hot, after bathing, I lay down on the bed and was starting to fall asleep, when they knocked on the door of the room.
I approached and asked who was playing, on the other side there was a melodious voice saying in a clear human dialect, "we are the guests of the neighboring room, we want to talk to you".
I opened the door and there were two human women, something I had not seen for almost four hundred years, I could not say if they were beautiful or not, my contact with the opposite gender, had been very little throughout my life, I was raised in a shelter, where I was the only one of my species and during my thirteen thousand years, I had only seen twenty other humans, of which only five were women.
One of them was lighter-skinned than mine and had short blond hair, the other was as dark as me and had long purple hair. They entered my room without asking my permission and sat on the bed.
-What's your name, man? -the brunette asked me.
-I don't have a name, they raised me without one, they have always called me human, -I answered them-. What do they want from me?
-When the gossip from the receptionist came to tell us that there was another human in the hostel, we immediately wanted to meet you - said the brunette -. My name is Sailana and my partner Irda, we met in delta quadrant, we have been traveling for nine thousand years and you are the first man we met.
-We've been keeping each other company for a long time, -said the blonde. And we thought that you could keep us company now.
-Where are you going,? -I asked them, even without understanding them.
-That's not important, we don't want you to travel with us, we want you to copulate with us, -said the brunette.
-We have never had male company and we believe it is our duty to try to procreate, there are no human gene samples anywhere, most of them hate us too much to save our seed. So we thought that since you are here, we could do it the old-fashioned way.
After saying this, both of them got up and started taking off the jumpsuits that were covering them, approached me and pushed me onto the noisy mattress, and then pounced on me.
Suddenly I felt a hand shake my shoulder, and a hoarse voice bark words by my ear.
-Wake up, Lucius, you are not paid to sleep --said the horrible voice.
Stunned and blinded by the brilliant projection of a fiscal format in front of my face, I blinked with my brain rumbling, and then I tilted my head to the right and looked up, towards the source of the noisy voice and found its frightening origin.
-Lucio woke up, had a coffee from the generator and continued with the analysis of the other thirty-two statements from the Ernes consortium. I don't care if it takes all night, but I want that in my terminal first thing tomorrow morning, -Mr. Petersen, director of the fiscal audit department; my boss, told me -. It's already late, I'm going to my room. I hope to see you with the job done in the morning.
I got up from my terminal and walked to the generating machine, maybe after two coffees, I would come to my senses enough, to continue with the statements.
Image Source https://pixabay.com/es/photos/alpine-arquitectura-15987/
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