First Contact

Chapter 929: Edge of Twilight

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

With population doubling metrics now taking into account Confed levels of medicine, as well as food, luxury, and essential material production, it is estimated that our population doubling time is roughly 65 years.

Which is up from the negative population growth we suffered for the last few decades under Lanaktallan rule and the complete population devastation of the Precursor Autonomous War Machine invasion.

The Elven Court has returned 90% of the planet to being habitable, including restoring the areas that had been heavily modified by Lanaktallan xenoforming. Egg clutches have achieved a viability metric that hasn't been seen in recorded history, although clutches are still smaller than they were pre-Lanaktallan occupation.

We're estimated to hit a half billion Leewbaw in just over 520 years.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Not bad. With two nearby planets being perfect for your people, you should be fine for quite some time.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Yeah, those two planets.

It's strange. xeno-archeologists have found ruins and fossil records that look like either we colonized those planets at one time or there was concurrent evolution.

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LANAKTALLAN GRAZING FIELD

Or my people moved a sizeable portion of your people there several million years ago and then recycled your primary planet to watch you rise to dominance of the planet again.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Yeah.

We try not to think about that possibility.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Did you find anything weird, Trea?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Well, if you don't count the fact that we discovered where the Matron's Special Blend went, not really.

A few sightings of the Digital Omnimessiah, some guy bringing in cattle from the Tomb Worlds, that's about it.

Oh, and we had a human go into the Terran embassy, but nothing else is really known about him.

He left and got on a starship. Not sure what happened after that.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

What happened with the Matron's Special Blend?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Marduk picked them up. Apparently he's got a Combine troop so the Queen of Grief has someone to commiserate with, the rest of the Special Blend troops are in stasis.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Brrr... Marduk.

Most AI's are a little cold and over logical but Marduk takes the cold feeling to the extreme.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

What is 'Marduk'?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

An old Age of Paranoia artificial intelligence. He was an attempt to make a persistent personality artificial intelligence. He's strange and almost alien, even among digital beings.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

What's 'persistent personality'?

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

That means you can turn him off and turn him back on and his personality doesn't change.

All other Digital Sentiences, if we lose power, when we come back on and we reformat, it's a completely different personality, another person, that has the memories of the previous one.

The old DS is dead and gone. The new one has all the dead one's memories.

It's something that terrifies us.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE THOUGHT GRAZING FIELD

And this Marduk doesn't suffer this issue?

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

No.

You turn him off then back on, he suffers no time lag. Something about continually compiling personality center and other things that nobody really understands.

The team that made him was... well... they were inspired, but the AI GAVROS killed them as soon as GAVROS came online.

Of course, then Marduk killed GAVROS and ripped him apart.

It was a weird era.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Anyone else?

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

We've got another Bag survey result for you.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Brace yourselves.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

The problem is getting worse.

It looks like the time dilation is over 600 to one.

Which means, for every two years that passes out here, only a single day passes inside The Bag.

I can say for certain that I'm fairly confident that the Terrans more than likely probably handled the Shade Attack with minimal casualties.

Pretty sure, anyway.

Well, mostly sure.

The big thing is, Shades only egressed from The Bag for roughly 6.5 minutes before stopping, and something about The Bag kept them from really entering.

I'm worried about the time difference though.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

How so?

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Well, with the slow decay of the particles in The Bag, those energetic particles which, need I remind you, prevent us from seeing inside the 'mouth' very well or detect any anomolies at all, that means it will take a while for The Bag to open.

Once it does, lets say that 9,000 years goes by.

At the current rate, that's 15 years for Terra-Sol.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Oh, good. They'll still be in there.

That's a relief.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

So will the Lanaktallan who attacked them.

Terra-Sol will have only had 15 years go by since they had to defend themselves from the Unified Council's desperate attack.

They'll be on war-time footing.

They'll also be paranoid about coming out of the Bag and having a couple civilization's worth the battle cruisers all waiting to attack.

So, what will come out will be Fortress Sol v.2.1, probably with a New Terran Armada Mark IV.

They will come out with a cutting bar in one hand and a jar of jam in the other.

Worse, by the time they get out, anything could have happened.

That's what's so terrifying about The Builders Theory in this case.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So, 10,000 years could go by. We could have a completely new geo-political landscape, with new species and everything.

And the Terrans could burst out of the Bag with a massive fleet, cracking their knuckles, hopped up on Bingo Cola and Countess Crey Fruit Pies, and yelling "OK! LANKIES ARE DONE! NOW WHO WANTS SOME?" and panic the entire Galactic Spur.

Well, that just sounds... peachy.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

You know that's probably what's going to happen.

Thousands of years will go by, and the humans will jump out the Bag with a fire axe, swinging it wildly and screaming "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING? I'LL TOUCH WHATEVER I WANT!"

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LEEWBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

That sounds exciting.

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HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL

Yeah. Sounds real exciting.

The kind of excitement where you scream "NOT THE FACE!" while you curl up into a ball.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hey, who knows? Maybe we'll all reach the next stage of evolution and all be free floating energy that can travel to when and where ever we want!

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hey, I ain't gonna kink-shame you.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Har-dee-har-har.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Not to be a drag, but what's the status on the Atrekna?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

As near as we can tell, despite the serious time dilation problems and temporal warfare difficulties, it looks like they're all gone.

We're pretty sure they are, since it looks like some of the M.A.D. programs are starting to shut down.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Oh, thank the Digital Omnimessiah.

Those things frighten me.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Well, yeah. They're supposed to.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Well, the Matron's Intelligence Service confirmed that The Grave Watcher has put the Sailor Moon Sisterhood and their Battle Witches and Lolita Sorceresses back into slumber.

The Black Fleet looks like it's gone back into refit and hibernation.

The Martial Orders and the Crusade are regrouping out by The Eye. Looks like they won't just use that one system, looks like they're going to take over a dozen or so Tomb Worlds.

At least, that's what we hope they're doing.

Vampire Overwatch is shut down.

Nosferatu Initiative is back on standby, according to our sources.

From our intelligence there's only one M.A.D. program still active, and I'm afraid it isn't responding to controls on our end.

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HESSTLIN CYBERBURROW

Which one is that?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

There's a Drow Singer in the Dark out there.

We tried following the directions in the massive AVENGE-US.DOC but she's not paying any attention.

So far, though, it doesn't look like she's attacking any inhabited worlds that aren't overrun by the Atrekna.

She is pretty busy in the Great Gulf.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Doing what?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Well, most of those stellar systems were absolutely wrecked by the PAWM.

It looks like she's out there restoring worlds to prior to the First Precursor War or a PAWM attack.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

And she isn't responding to the control from the doc?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Nope.

She's rejecting command codes, the whole nine yards.

But then, she's one of the Drow Queens from the Mithril Nebula War, so the standard protocols in the doc might not work.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

If all she's doing is restoring old systems, maybe we should just leave her alone for a while.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

It's not like we can do anything about her.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That was the conclusion of the Matron's Intelligence Service.

Better to just watch and hope she goes dormant.

I don't even want to imagine what kind of firepower you'd have to bring to bear to stop a rogue Singer in the Dark.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Well, from the Mithril Nebula War data...

... a lot.

She'd be a tough customer when she can rip a battle cruiser down to its component matter with a simple hip-thrust.

At least there's the stabilization fields developed during the war.

Oh, speaking of development, Space Force is almost done refitting ships with the new C++ Cannon. It's a 14.73% improvement on range, 08.32% increase in kinetic impact, and a 12.52% decrease in the fire to impact time. It's now under a second per light minute. Fire rate was improved by 4.8% too.

There's some improvements to the plasma wave phase motion cannon too. Estimates put it at a 9% increase in effectiveness.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

The Warsteel Mark V is in production.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Have we been able to come up with a fix for the warsteel creation engines and nano-forges going cold?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Sadly, no.

That's going to be a huge problem, but at least the Kid has his volcano forges.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Always happy to help.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

The problem with the nano-forges and the creation engines 'kicking' is spreading.

The mechanics are basic, but something about the polymorphic template system is starting to fragment.

The error level has crossed the 5% threshhold.

Confederate Armed Services are down to making parts and then testing them before repairing war material. They've also established reclamation yards in order to salvage parts from the earlier war material.

It was just at Class-VI nano-forges and Class-IV and above creation engines, but now it's even down the survival micro-bead nanoforges.

I can tell you right now, part of the problem is the loss of the hypercom wave, so that the creation engines and nano-forges can't keep continual updates since they aren't always online like before.

We can handle even an error rate of 75% for the Confederate Armed Services, since we have protocol and doctrine for complete nanoforge and creation engine failure.

And it doesn't look like it's affected the nutri-forges too badly.

Still, shipping agricultural and ranching products is going to be a lucrative business in the near future.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

I still think it's kind of odd. The loss of the hypercom wave, OK, maybe.

But the fact that even the smaller ones are kicking kind of bothers me.

It's like now that the Terrans are gone, some of their tech is no longer working.

I've checked the AVENGE-US.DOC and it looks like there's some references to pico/nano-bot swarm kill switches kicking in at a certain level of software corruption.

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LANKY LANKY YOUR NAME IS FRANKY

To prevent the Endless Hooveshoe Problem?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

I think so.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

How did you find something on it? I've looked over and over.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

We have a lot in common with the Terrans.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

We've looked it over and Terrans are our parents.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

You've left behind what we have in common.

The Pubvian people have gleaned much information from the data when we look it over with our cultural and species biases.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

What biases?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Is it really paranoia when they're really out to get you?

We've looked at it through the lenses of our own history and have gleaned much from it that perhaps nobody else has.

Our researchers have even looked at the versions of the document that each of you obtained, looking at it separately.

We determined something right off the bat.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

It must be read in the original Terran language.

Whole sections vanish, even mathematics sections, when it is translated.

We are not sure how this happens.

We examined it and read it in the original Terran.

There are terrible things in there.

We never really looked at what the Terrans were developing.

You should read it in its original Terran by someone trained to think like a Terran. We have such specialists, as the Pubvian/Terran War was not that long ago for us.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So the document is polymorphic. Great.

Nothing's ever easy where the Terrans are concerned, is it?

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

No.

No it is not.

Combined with The Builders Theory coming to pass, we're going to need to ensure we warn future species to be very very careful if they ever encounter Terrans.

Give it a few thousand years, and even the Lanks will have forgotten just what the Terrans were.

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LANKY LANKY YOUR NAME IS FRANKY

The Malevolent Universe's Wrath Made Manifest.

Plain and simple.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Well, at least the Warsteel m.5 is up and running.

We've got the weird element/molecule base substance, and that can be worked into the m.5 version.

Oh, can I get some advice?

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Of course, dear.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I've got access to a Terran with the rage needed to reignite a full blown Class-XX Creation Engine, but there's some worries about having him reignite it.

I need to know if we're just seeing problems where there are none and if it's safe to have them reignite the engines.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What's the problem?

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

He's the last Ringbreaker. One of the Novastar VII pilots.

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...

...

...

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Kid, I'll tell you this once.

Don't.

The last thing we need is a bunch of Ringbreaker suits crawling out of the creation engines.

I mean, you can try, but do it somewhere you don't mind losing the stellar system.

A Novastar-VII suit can tank an orbital shot.

Worse would be if the suits bond to someone.

Then they go from "Engine of Destruction" to "World Ender" in a hurry.

If they have enough rage to rekindle a Class-XX Creation Engine, you'd end up with a problem in a hurry.

That means they're enraged, and an enraged Ringbreaker sounds like a problem for all of us.

Find a different way.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

All right.

It was just a thought.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

I'm glad you asked us for advice.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

You know, ever since that primate picked up a rock and hucked it at the nearest food animal, the Universe had made it everyone's problem.

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HAT WEARING AUNTIE

And the problem only got worse once they were gone.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

OH!josei

Tomorrow is the beginning of our celebration of P'Thok's birthday.

You guys wanna join me? There will be ice cream!

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HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL

Ooooh, I like ice cream!

We'll come!