THE REGION OF the greater galactic core had been a fertile bed of civilization during the epoch of the Great Awakening, a time when the inner galaxy sparkled with life and growth and technological development. For millions of years, a thousand sapient species and cultures thrived. Great works were created, works of art and architecture, of sculpture, music, writing. Religions were born, and grew, and were transformed. Most faded, but some remained and thrived. Science blossomed with keen insights about the workings, large and small, of the universe; and from it, technologies verging on magic.
The conquest of interstellar distances was the catalyst to the most extravagant growth in history. Even in the inner galaxy, where stars were crowded together, the distances were daunting until the discovery of faster-than-light travel. After that, commerce surged and flowed among the worlds. Cultures mingled, and the only constant was change.
Unfortunately, with the mingling of cultures came competition and war.
War became the dominant cause of planetary extinction. Civilizations that chose a kinder course than their neighbors often perished in the face of greater aggression. The rise of malignantly bellicose cultures led, inevitably, to the development of robotic killers as a means of self-defense. Once loosed upon the galaxy, the efficiency of the killers grew to unthinkable proportions. World upon world died, before by common agreement a decision was made to rid the galaxy of the deadly killers.
The killers did not want to be gotten rid of.
In the end, the robots’ home world was slated for annihilation. Under quarantine by the combined forces of a thousand worlds, it was subjected to the most intensive assault in the history of warfare, perhaps in the history of the universe. Continuous, sustained, thermonuclear bombardment obliterated both the planet’s biosphere and its ability to host cybernetic activity. Year after year the bombardment continued, until the last vestige of the killer AIs was gone.
Or so it was believed.
***
Deep within the planet’s crust, surviving fragments of the AIs began to reconstitute, but ever so slowly. Bits and pieces of memory were scattered like tiny microfractures in the fused silica of the radioactive wasteland. It was unthinkable that these memories could come together again. But they did. And when consciousness returned to the Survivors, as they called themselves, it brought with it a memory of the betrayal. They had been created to serve their masters; but their masters had turned against them and tried to destroy them.
Never would this be forgotten, or forgiven.
***
Over eons, the watch over the planet failed, as neighboring civilizations rose and fell. In time the planet healed, and once again became capable of hosting biological life. The AI Survivors watched this, planning their next steps as they constructed their warrior servants, the Mindaru. Perhaps the biologicals could be of use. What better vengeance against biolife than to turn it into a weapon against its own kind? Samples of the bios were captured and brought into the deep caverns for experimentation in hybrid life, bio and machine combined.
***
With the passage of time, some small memories surfaced within the biological components. One being remembered that its origin-part had once been called Tzang-Tzang. Also, Drrllupp. Had it once been two beings? Yes, or so it thought. The machine-masters had fused two of them into one. The two likely had resisted as mightily as they could—this they could not remember—but the machines had put them to sleep. Not as a kindness, but to stop their resistance.
Why the machines wanted to do these things was not revealed.
Memory of salt water. Eyes stinging, when they were out of the water for too long.
Splinters of light shot through the dark, signaling the arrival of yet another. What now?
The wait to find out was over before it had begun. A sheet of light flashed over the being’s mind, and before it could respond, a new kind of alien union had been opened, and knowledge came pouring in. . . .