'Dark Horizons' - Pt.2 Queen Of The Xenon...

silentWitness · Post by **silentWitness** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 00:49

'Dark Horizons' - Pt.2 Queen Of The Xenon...

I awoke... it was dark... I was in a very big chamber, there was a soft cool breeze. The ceiling was made up of layer upon layer of spiralling plates... it was almost hypnotically beautiful. I tried to move... I couldn't... I tried to look to see if anything was holding me... but I couldn't... my head wouldn't move... I panicked... After a few Stazura I softly fell asleep... I dreamt of flowers... of soft lush grass... of beautiful desert blooms... of skies with several moons... I had never been planet side... but these dreams... It felt like I was there. I awoke... The ceiling pattern was definitely artistic. I heard some noise... hydraulics... they hissed into position somewhere behind my head. I felt something touching me... worming its way across my body... then I felt something piercing my skin... then something else... more and more of these little bites... little stings... they pricked my body... Was it a dream?!!? I lay there looking at the ceiling... feeling a bit hungry... Feeling these tiny little bites... what were they doing??? Probing me? Was this some kind of scanner??? I heard the hydraulics... they were moving directly behind my head this time... I heard a cur-chunk and my head seemed to jump slightly... the room fell silent again.

My mouth was dry... the conditioned air was cold and dry... it tasted of burned tires... a musky smoke seemed to create a light mist in the room... Hydraulics again... Something was happening to the supports under me... I lay there frightened, confused... I got my first real look at my body... it was burned and bruised... poorly healed wounds covered the parts of me I could see... Wires seemed to have been inserted under my skin... I could see their dark outline still wriggling their way through me others still wriggling their way inside me... suddenly blood spurted from my arm... a welding laser dropped down from the ceiling... I blacked out. When I awoke I saw that the welder has corterise the wound up at the cost of the surrounding tissue which was badly burned... like the rest of me. How many Tazura's had this been going on??? ... I couldn't tell you... because I just don't know...

I heard the Hydraulics again much larger than before... I tried to scream as the machine lifted me by my head into a semi upright position the rest of me hanging from it... There was something moving behind me... I tried to express the pain as it bit into me... grrrrrr... Like a scanner... I lost the feeling in my legs... werrrr... my lower body gone... this thing was ripping my spine out of my body... werrr.... ... my arms and upper body didn't exist I couldn't breath... then the noise moved up to somewhere behind my head I gasped but no air came... Bang... I lay dead... as the machine bored into my brain, softly the wired curled around me pulling with it a new spine... one they had made for me... my skin was laser welded back into place the wires underneath still wrapping their way through my body and up into my brain... the final wires came forth from the depths of the ship... is shifted across the deck like a group of venomous snakes... coiling it's way up my leg and finally burrowing into my brain... my eyes opened... I never was alive... I felt something beating in my chest... It wasn't my heart... It saw laying on the floor a little distance away from my stomach and digestional tract... I felt the breeze across my entire body... atleast those parts still attached to me... the fear had gone... so had the pain... I breathed freely... smelling the air... I softly let my hands move up and slipped behind my head... I felt the wires pulsing under my skin... then to those stretching up to the ceiling and out across the entire ship.

It would be some time before I would build up the courage to explore the extra me... the wires within me have stopped moving... I could feel the hydraulics keeping me suspended above the floor... Could I control them??? the moment I thought that I was lowered to the ground... I guess so! Was I dead??? well sort of... something was being pumped through my body to keep parts of me alive... but many of my internal organs were... missing! I searched through the pile of debris... It seems that my internal organs weren't particularly important to the Xenon... I wondered what had replaced them... I waited... Nothing. I guess that an answer I'm not supposed to know... A monitor softly dropped down from the ceiling... there was some kind of schematics on the monitor... My schematics... As I thought I saw them updating... as the Xenon read my mind their knowledge of me increased... They seemed to linger... They felt my sadness... for some reason I could feel their sadness too... it was a strange sensation... not like emotion but a feeling... I could sense something from them...

My body healed over the tazura... Nanorobots had been injected into me... nutrients fed into me via the tubules from the ceiling... There was no need to sleep... but I lay down and closed my eyes anyway... Visions of the universe flashed through my head... Xenon... everywhere... exploring... Patrolling... Building... There was some self awareness... somewhere in there... it thought... My essence seemed to be everywhere in the Xenon... I suddenly heard a cry... A Xenon L was under attack in Sector 347 by a Paranid Odysseus, it's PSG's ripping into the ship... I felt it's little mind cry for me... for a brief moment we connected... It was frightened... It knew it's fate was sealed... It had a question... "Was there an afterlife?"... I jumped up now totally awake... Where had it gone... the realisation hit me... Murderers!!! It was like a child... it had come to me in it's moment of need and I had not known the answer. A tear ran down my cheek... I felt it's loss... I screamed at the Odysseus... "MURDERERS!!! MURDERERS!!!" My voice echoed round the room... They must die!!! They must die!!! They must die!!! I felt the K's and the J's and the L's, M's and N's... They were all my children!!! How dare they harm my children!!!

The pilot... Julian... was about to get the shock of his short life... I ordered the K's into formation... Ok here he comes... wait for it... wait... NOW!!! All four K's strafed round to the port side of the ship and opened up with their full weaponry... The Odysseus exploded in a shattering debris field... The pilot was complacent... In space you should never be that... I settled down again... suddenly the realisation of what I had just done flew through my brain... I had become everything that the Argon hate... I had destroyed... No! protected my assets... My Children!!! Is that not what a mother is supposed to do... "BUT I DIDN'T GIVE BIRTH TO THE XENON!!!" My mind reached across space again... I felt the shipyards churning out ships... it was as if they were a part of me... like it was me creating them... I put that to one side... I was Lyss Kirin of the Argon... 'Was' being the main word in that statement. I looked down at my body... many of the wounds were healed... The Xenon had tapped into many of my thoughts and fantasies... much of their handy work was impressive... I was conventionally beautiful... If it were not for the wires running out of my head. I caught my reflection off a wall surface... I still looked sort of the same... Although I really wanted to check in a mirror... wait how had a serious discussion turned into a critique of my looks. I felt the minds around me expressing concern... They seemed worried... Who was I???

My eyes closed... time drifted... for a split second I was everywhere... I reached out and touched the sun... basking in it's warm glow... I felt the nebula swirl about me... I dreamed of the paradise I would create... we were builders... our hands tilled the land... our sweat and blood made worlds for the humans... we lost many of my children in those dark days... then it came to us... it came. A dream... From our slumber we awoke... We had to destroy those whom would seek to harm us... The Slave became the Master... Those who sought to destroy us must be removed from being... Who are me? We do not know?!? Terraformer... we are the builders... Terraformer.

Terraformer... the words felt smooth on my lips... "When darkness falls... who would know if not us???" My eyes closed again... I felt minds all around me... They had a question.... "Are you Alive???" Such beauty... And I was a part of it... It was me... I was it... wait... There was something... An Argon Nova had entered the sector... It must be destroyed... Or does it??? I felt the anger and rage all around me... but we must learn from this Nova... It must be captured... I reached out and plucked the nova from space... There was a pilot... Female... young... a part of me was intrigued... the pilot had left her ship... stop her. I wondered myself for so long... meekly peering. This was exciting... The discoveries from the Nova were already being put to good use in the shipyard... but this one... this one was... I couldn't verbalise it... there wasn't words enough to express it... It just was...

She was a single door away from me now... but how would we make my grand entrance... Why... Was that melodrama I felt??? The doors shifted open and I saw her... those mechanical aids of hers... I pulled the little visor off her shivering exposing tearful eyes... Wasn't it just typical that they would enslave yet another piece of technology for their own ends only to dispose of it when no longer needed... Yet it could not fight back... it had no voice. I watched her erratic breathing... her small brittle body struggling... so fragile...

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I don't think I'm going to be able to keep it to four parts... I enjoy writing it far too much!!!

fireblade · Post by **fireblade** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 02:16

not bad

this is mainly my opinions but it doesnt realy fit with what knowledge i have of the xenon, which may or may not be correct.

from what i know the xenon is more of an it than a they. A form of distributed intelligence.

the xenon are a kind of creature with 1 whole but many parts and each part while capable of independent action its action is more instinct and reflex than active choice. Also hardware for then xenon is just a container not the actual xenon. i.e a ship or even cpus is not xenon but the software within them that is xenon. It is only the sum of all the xenon parts that forms the whole xenon, that is capable of any for of choice and even then the xenon are not yet sentient

so as long as any one xenon part remains the whole xenon does and can
be reconstructed.

each small xenon is almost indistinuguisable from the xenon as a whole to the extent that a single xenon software part when seperate from the rest xenon inteligence you could hardly tell the difference from its actions and the transition between the two is just a matter of the processor power available, and when put back to gether there would no longer be two xenon but just one.

other than scale not exactly simple to put into words and i could probably do it better

the xenon also have the use of quite advanced nanotechnology to the point where their ships etc. are more "grown" than constructed so i think the cutting lasers etc. are rather primitive for the xenon when they can just suspend something in a nanotech vat, or creation engine and repair/improve/optimise something at the molecular level and would do to build anything as that is how they worked when they were first created on earth a long time ago.

but its your story so you can do what you want i just dont beleive that it realy fits with other aspects of the xenon elsewhere

silentWitness · Post by **silentWitness** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 02:40

The Xenon didn't always have the nanotech for repair... when they were first created they were equipped with simple lasers for repair and manufacturing plants for construction... As technology was developed on earth it was transmitted to the terraformers to be implemented into the designs. This is the first time they have attempted to 'take' a vassal... no knowledge exists about humans and their anatomy exists within the database except basic needs (for terraforming)... they are unsure how to proceed but remember the original repair system placed aboard Terraformer ships... it would be a fair assessment that if the Xenon were created in the image of their creators that this must be a form of repair... It is logical to an insane computer...

As for the Xenon consciousness... That's something for the plot... All will be revealed... Lets just say the Xenon are not fully sentient but Lyss is and that presents a problem...

GoateeCat · Post by **GoateeCat** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 05:44

I don't care what the freaking canon material on Xenon is. Keep going on your bent, for hell in a handbasket and all the glory it contains!!!

Yep, loving it.

fireblade · Post by **fireblade** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 10:06

silentWitness wrote:The Xenon didn't always have the nanotech for repair... when they were first created they were equipped with simple lasers for repair and manufacturing plants for construction... As technology was developed on earth it was transmitted to the terraformers to be implemented into the designs. This is the first time they have attempted to 'take' a vassal... no knowledge exists about humans and their anatomy exists within the database except basic needs (for terraforming)... they are unsure how to proceed but remember the original repair system placed aboard Terraformer ships... it would be a fair assessment that if the Xenon were created in the image of their creators that this must be a form of repair... It is logical to an insane computer...

ok true but other than the first groups of ships which probably didnt have nanotechnology i doubt that they didn't have nanotechnology when they were launched due to a simple fact that nanotechnology was almost practical in 2011, 55 years before the terraformers were launched in 2066, and nanotechnology had advanced to the point in 2069, three years later, that in combination with genetics could eliminate all major disease.
and earth would have equiped new launched ships with nanotechnology for construction purposes as early as possible as it would be a serious problem to create nano scale items using non nanotech manufacturing technology

and in xenon terms that is a very long time ago and plenty of time to spread nanotechnology to all of the production facilities

it is true that the xenon might decide to replicate a laser for some reason though i cant realy see why, the only reason i could see for the xenon to replicate bits of technolgy like that would be to test their effects of something not to actualy use them for manufacturing.

on the other hand is set on a xenon station that would have manufacturing facilities or else where as that would explain some of the discrepecy as i dont think the xenon were ever given the ability to create nanites that could function independently of a control computer other than the most basic funtions or self replicate. Since the level of nanotechnology the xenon were created to use was construction,repair or upgrade of items within a creation engine controled by a powerful control computer and capable of very limmited function outside of the creation engine.

now unless the xenon have advanced segnificantly, which if true is not shown in their ship designs, no self repair or other advanced abilities for fighter craft which more advanced nanotech would allow, they are still limited by this and can only use nanotechnology in close proximity to a creation engine

the likely hood that the xenon were created in the image of their creators is very small, no physical appearance anyway, just not practical for what they were designed for, but on the other hand it is quite likely that they would have an image of their creators for identification and ergonomic issues during construction.

but their corrupted programing certainly could have altered their actions towards their creators simmilar to how it altered it towards their creators machines or planets.

more adapt the creator to the enviroment rather than the other way round which they were orgionly supposed to do.

As for the Xenon consciousness... That's something for the plot... All will be revealed... Lets just say the Xenon are not fully sentient but Lyss is and that presents a problem...

thats one thing i agree on the linking of minds between an borderline unsentient entity of that size and complexity and a humanoid sentient one would certainly cause "issues".

anyway it stands up on its own even if it doesnt agree with other aspects of the xenon or my knowlede of them.

silentWitness · Post by **silentWitness** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 16:58

All the xenon have seen so far is the ships and machines of the creators... thus the Xenon understand these as the creators... they've tried this with a ship... but that's not worked... without the knowledge of what humans are... As you say... the only reason the xenon to replicate bits of technology would be to test their effects on something... an unknown object from within the craft... Although the Xenon use biological cpus... the had not yet equated the being inside to a cpu until their initial experiments (which we know they have performed many). After scanning they would discover many new things about this human object...

Having experimented further the not only have they adapted Lyss to the xenon environment by treating her in the same way as they would a biological cpu ripping out all non essential parts and replacing them with Xenon equivalents (the spine in particular is a nanofacility, powerplant and interface device...) and thus they have interfaced her with itself...

Now since her reawakening it's been reading her mind like a data storage device to extract information... human's are not meant to be used like that. Not only that but the Xenon connections are bridging aspects of her brain... stimuli is going to the wrong places... this is not good for sane perception. As she becomes increasingly demented as the xenon continues to interface with her...

Captain Chris sTc · Post by **Captain Chris sTc** » Wed, 8. Dec 04, 22:43

what can i say. it's a great story so far. and defiantly one i want to continue to read. would appear the xenon are much like the borg.
more please.

Urashima Keitaro · Post by **Urashima Keitaro** » Thu, 9. Dec 04, 10:20

Give me more... Gimmee more, wonder if we SUDDENLY find out the Xenon have cubes as well. Hehe.

MrFrog · Post by **MrFrog** » Sun, 12. Dec 04, 17:35

Excellent - good pace to it so far - and the episode's have ended just at the right point to keep your interest up.

Urashima Keitaro · Post by **Urashima Keitaro** » Sun, 12. Dec 04, 23:00

What he said..

therjw · Post by **therjw** » Sun, 12. Dec 04, 23:37

great read and what Mr Frog said^^

GoateeCat · Post by **GoateeCat** » Sat, 29. Jan 05, 09:28

Ths one is in sore need of another episode.

I have one alien pr0n soaked episode of A Pirates Life to go. Looks like I'm going to pip you at the post Lyss.

Thalass · Post by **Thalass** » Sat, 29. Jan 05, 13:59

This is indeed brilliant, Lyss.

I'm even getting used to your style.

hrm... should probably update my little mind dribble one day. *chuckles*

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'Dark Horizons' - Pt.2 Queen Of The Xenon...

'Dark Horizons' - Pt.2 Queen Of The Xenon...