RIGHT MY SPELLING AND GRAMMA ARE ATROCIOUS AND I AM NOT GOOD AT STORY TELLING BUT IF THIS INSPIRES FEEL FREE TO USE AT WILL, in part this was inspired
by Future shock storys from the old 2000AD comic I used to read as a kid.
The Exodus.
Countless people had died in the last few moments as the artificial magnetic field collapsed, the temperature and particle radiation had gotten too
much for the two polar satellites that had generated the great artificial magnetosphere for nearly a million years now since our ancestors had built
them and they had finally been overloaded by the energy of our dying sun Karis, Iltrath lay burning now but we had known it was coming for many
thousands of years, looking down on the planet below it was hard and painfull seeing the flames racing around from the day side while we sheltered in
the shadow of the planet and even here the radiation was lethal.
Below the last lights of the great citys flickered and went out as the wave of fiery fury and plasmatised atmosphere rushed around with the steam
clouds of the boiling oceans, any life left below was broiled away and incinerated, We screamed in shared pain with all of our people below whom died
but there was nothing we could do and we owed it to those whom we had on board to continue with the exodus.
There had not been time to build more of these ships so only a few had finally been built and each to seek its own destination, though earlier exodus
had left the planet many times to many destinations some now unkown lost to the ages, always they had left the poor masses behind but some out of
there own ethics always stayed to try to find a way and at last in the face of an environment in which organic life could no longer live and the vast
distances between our home and other stars that might harbour suitable planets we could adapt to our use or ourselves to we had finally used a form of
nano technology to integrate those whom were selected into the ships themselves.
As I lay back against the integration couch and closed my eyes I felt a sensation of comfort and warmth then a tingling in my entire body, suddenly I
started to feel the ship and could look out of the hull seeing things my eyes never could, I could hear the stars and the roar of the particles racing
around the planet and impacting the hull a shower of hot sparks against my skin and it hurt but not too badly as yet, I could feel the radiation
passing through my hull and wondered at my body which would never survive that amount of damaging radiation so I watched myself being integrated.
My body was now grey with the nanites replacing all of my cellular structure, then I watched as the body was absorbed into the integration couch with
also flattened and dissapeared into the wall, my entire nervous system had been contained intact but absorbed into the ship and turned into a solid
state that replicated its functions, then I thought about the others, my mind could see a form of software generated world were we could interact as
individuals and many chose to do so going about there simulated lives as though they were still down on Iltath but others, the scientists and
engineers were networking there minds and using there enhanced mental abillitys to plan what lay ahead.
I watched as our ship changed shape almost like it was a fluid and we left the burning world and the dying star behind, Neutronium harvested from a
stella fragment was combined with anti matter and the resultant expansion energy was released to propel us to near one thousandth of a percent of the
speed of light, the excelleration seemed to take forever but had we not been now part of the ship our organic forms would have simple been destroyed,
as our ship travelled it would harvest any matter it came across and in the event of no world being found it itself would become that world.
It had been theorized that the earlier exodus may have spawned many new races in the hundreds of thousands of years they had been occuring, each time
Karis had increased its solar output the satellite stations were expected to fail but they had been continuously modified as the scientists always
found a way, Karis was now in her final stages and would likely go nova within a few thousand years, the star was now so big that at noon the horizon
was the only place not filled by the red glow of her expansion and that expansion was accelerating, At last even with anti matter and neutronium
powering the satellite generators the environment had grown too harsh and they had finally begun to fail.
So we set course through a darkness none of us had ever known under the glare of Karis to the distant stars, a young yellow dwarf star had been
detected in the process of formation with a large accretion disc, a nebulous stella nursery in the neighbouring arm of our galaxy about a third
further out than Karis and it was theorized that it would likely give birth to multiple planets so it was our first chosen to seek a new habitable
world, the journey would take about 2 billion years but as long as and our ship was not struck by a neutron wave we would be OK and the ship would
harvest any matter and energy it encountered, most of the occupants chose to sleep in a dreamless state for the time but groups of us would stay awake
to maintain the ship with our own intelligence enhanced by the artificial intelligence of the ship, it was realized that over time the two would merge
for those of us whom did this.
.......
For Unity of I the deceleration took thousands of years but at last below me I could see a suitable planet so for many millions of years I tweaked
the atmosphere while my nanites released clouds of spores that were engineered to biologically adapt the planet, in all this time my primary purpose
had never been forgotten and at last I generated the cellular structures and tweaked the life I had seeded to recreate the life from my archives that
has once dwealt on the land and in the oceans of Iltrath, many times I had to purge the planet of the life I had seeded as it deviated and the planet
being smaller than Iltrath it was not so easy having to adapt the lifeforms, it was in the right solar climate zone and the only long term stable
candidate for the task though, at long last it was almost ready so extracting from my archives I reengineered tweaked cellular structure using my
nanites to recreated the Iltrathian race, they were taller and not quite the same but they were now sentient and I was forbidden from taking further
action so seperating the consciousness from myself I used the integration suite to recreate several Iltrathian scientist but because of the stella
radiation that had saturated me for over two billion years I had to maintain them with nanites and they looked alien being a hybridisation of what
they had been and what they had become, there bulbous heads accomodated there higher level of enhanced intelligence and there skin was grey with the
nanite saturation but these people were soon commanding me and from myself I spawned many smaller ships for there tasks, I was stationed in a parked
equatorial orbit my spherical hull hardened by ages of interstellar impacts and mass accumulation I watched as they worked on recreating there world
below to an image they idealized and wondered why they never asked me to reawaken the millions I had asleep within my structure.
But for now I would guard the sleeping Iltrathians until the world was ready to recieve them waiting
edit on 27-11-2013 by LABTECH767 because:
(no reason given)