Emergency Net 125K

No matter what is happening outside, the life moves in a slow and deliberate pace in those corridors. The tallest figures who move through them tower above me, three times taller than me, and the ceiling of those columns flanking the corridors are 20 times taller than them. Five times taller than the ceiling to the corridors is the base of the dome above the pool. I was under the impression that such exaggerated scale was just a say to make the Central Chamber resemble some sort of temple.

We didn’t needed columns in here either. This could be designed as the rest of the Urban Hive. All that stone and decorative luminescence is unnecessary. Or so I though.

The very size of those corridors, forcing us to walk for more than one hour before we can see the first access door to the garden ring. Then, meditation rooms, studding grounds, the cells of the internal personal. We must walk through much of that, and the access passages are intentionally complicated. It is intentional.

This is not a temple, this is an emergency system of communication. However, to keep it alive we must isolate the pool from the daily tensions of everyday life.

There are six quadrillions of talking, living, minds on this planet. In the surface, under it, in the Hives that pierce the atmosphere, so high that gravity on the high floors is half what it is at sea level.

Since the Big War started Humanity had to learn and adapt. Fight the demons almost never ends well. We don’t try to win anymore. The United Military delay them, only.

Fast evacuation is the key for survival. Those Urban Hives are a marvel of engineering. They are designed to raise into orbit. The floors of all Hives disconnect, to fit in the internal surface of a Migration Vessel. Those cylinders in orbit. Waiting, ready to carry the population of this planet, to join other vessels, caring people from other planets and moons.

It has to be a long cylinder, because in space we get our artificial gravity by spinning this cylinder. Centrifuge **** tasted just like gravity, even if it is fake. Just like some subhumans may look exactly like our betters. Do everything they do.

Stellar Systems are abandoned completely, the idea is to leave no alexandrine human behind.

All that only has chance to work thanks to our work, in places like that.

We are the Long-Range Communication Net. Daily information travel at lightspeed, keeping the High AIs connected by laser, in a net that reaches the entire territory occupied by Humanity. Takes hundreds of thousands of years for an archive to travel between the 2 extremes. Our net shares information in real time. Takes hours to separate most the secondary information from noise, but the actual emergencies are shared in seconds. The military authorities in the system take control over all Hives in every city, in every nation of every planet or moon. In less than a minute, after the message was generated, confirming the necessity of evacuation.

The hard realities of physics make impossible to move fleets in space in secret, And the demons are faster than us, but they can only move at 15% of light speed. We get at least centuries of advantage. And the United Military fights to buy us more time.

It is always a race, now. Humanity is running for its survival as specie. We arrive in a system, build, accumulate resources, knowing that we will need to leave at some moment. Taking what we can with us, to spread to new star systems, that we will eventually need to abandon in a hurry someday too. So far, we are winning.

Human population is still growing, despite all the effort made by our evil enemy.

We make it possible, despite the fact that there is no human among us. No human telepath. We are all genetically engineered subhumans, property of our creators under Alexandrine Law. Well, we got a better piece of existence than most other subhumans. No argument.

Arguably, the fact that we can hope to live indefinitely, or “forever” makes our fate better than the fate of alexandrine humans. Even considering they are people and we are not.

Because they can only live up to 300 years. The legal humans.

I will tell you who I am, then what I do, but that is not the important subject here. Is just my way to give you some sense of scale. Like you could put a human by the side of a foot of a Mecha and then zoom out to give the viewer some notion about what “on average 500 meters” means.

My name is Vasco. Vasco Leon. I got the privilege to choose it myself to replace the code I had been given before birth. That happened when I was 22 years old and the United Military invoked its prerogative to conscript every telepath in our sector who passed their tests.

Exchange my previous owner for military life didn’t seemed to make much difference for me, at the time. Until I was informed that I could actually choose myself a name.

I am 5.031 years old now. There is only 2 promotions I can still get in my current career, if we can call it that way. Honestly, I am in no hurry to move up. I am satisfied with my current obligations.

The Node mixes different telepath brands of subhumans, in specific and tested proportions. Our functions intertwine and overlap in some ways, and, to stay very generic in this introduction I can only say we move from the external rings of the Node to the ones closer to the pool. As we ascend in hierarchy, inside our respective brands.

Most telepaths are here to shield the Node Core from stressful noise coming from the minds of people outside the node. Then a few among us must move in the opposite direction, and connect the Long Distance Net to the local, national, planetary and systematic authorities.

Of course, there are other activity involved. The inhabitant of that pool must eat, for instance, and it can hardly take care of that for himself.

I am a telepath myself. Until the year 22.000 of Expansion, and more significantly until the year 26.000, it implied “sub-human”, and in my case that implication remains true. However, now, there are some alternatives. Arguably.

In practice, even if not in legal Alexandrine terminology.

Now vampires exist in our society. Agents of true aliens, that Humanity met in 22.000 for the first time. In Mystery System. Then, in 26.000, the rogue AIs called “demons” attacked the Solar System, killing everybody there. Taking the birthplace of humanity and core of Human Civilization. What **** humanity to rethink its war against the vampires, and start taking some of them as citizens. With rights and privileges, stablished by negotiation.

Secret negotiations, and secret terms, I may ad. That was when the United Military stopped being an symbolic institution concerned mostly with organize festivities and regulate traffic between stellar systems. To became the actual military shield of all human nations, standing between Humanity and complete extinction.

The High AIs do not recognize vampires, but despite that they are somewhat external to the absolutely eternal categories created by the Consensus of Alexandria.

Mecha-Lords exist. Few families have deserted the Deshiar society, the alien society. Humanity managed to build some gigantic technomagic robots by its own. With the help of vampires who deserted their kin. And the help of mages as well.

Mostly, subhuman mages. Because the investment to train a mage is too high to be rational to give the chance to a human. Who will give you less than 300 years of return, as mage. When you can give the sit to a subhuman, who will work for you indefinitely.

Mechas are not common machines. I do not know the details, but everybody with good contacts knows that: is impossible to create a mecha without either tie it to an existing Mecha-Lord family or start a new one. Mechas need pilots, and all the pilots must came from the same lineage. If the lineage die, the giant, immensely expensive, robot becomes a monument to prodigality.

Vampires are a sort of ambassadors for the only alien civilization we ever met. Despite the fact that all those working for us are also, in some sense, traitors in the eyes of their kin.

Mecha-Lords are harder to describe and to understand. Most information about then is classified. The fact is that they are the only ones who can pilot their 500 meters tall robots. Those robots are exceptionally hard to replace, and also the most important weapon in the arsenal of humanity. The demons have their own Mechas, and those are somewhat better than ours, not needing humans or subhuman pilots. For all practical purposes the only thing we have that can stand against a Mecha is another Mecha. Knowing that, we do not need a formal admission from our generals to know that Mecha-Lords have special status in society.

Mages too, as I mentioned. Only place in the Universe where a person with potential to became a mage can raise to that condition is Mystery System. The Deshiar home and Stronghold. Each mage humanity gets is the product of long, and certainly expensive, negotiations with the vampires. Not to mention that you need to find the individuals who have potential, and only mages can do that. Then you need to transport the project of mage from where you found him to Mystery System, and from Mystery System to where you need a mage.

Logistic has no hearth, I promise you. No compassion.

So, subhuman mages get some special treatment, and implicit status above their condition of subhumans.

Other useful subhumans do not enjoy the same privilege. The Lords are associated with vampires in some way. Perhaps the same can be said about the mages. At least, they got their education in the stellar system where we found the Deshiar.

I catch myself usinf both “us” and “them” to refer to the United Human Effort, and to the Alexandrine Civilization this effort aims to protect.

This is wrong, I know, but is also a common linguistic defect among subhumans in general. Inevitable, I guess.

We are, and we are not, part of Alexandria.

My object of focus here is not that.

I am primarily talking about the Emergency Net. People lime me help its maintenance. We are not the backbone holding it.

Would be an unpleasant, traumatic, and more likely than not fatal experience to you. To receive information directly from one of those who are the backbone of that net. In that sense, is fortuned that I am the one trying to organize this in a way that makes sense. And, if doesn’t, at least will remain harmless.

We just help to shield that structure that holds the weight of long range communication in real time, in the occupied sector of our galaxy. We connect it to the final user and beneficiary, Humanity.

I dare to say, that is as useful, and as necessary, for humanity. As the work of Mecha-Lords and vampires. The difference is that we can be replaced much easier.

Telepaths are conceptual subhumans. The geneticist designed our DNA “from scratch”, piece by piece, allegedly. And telepaths are harder to build than any other rare prize of genetic engineering. All that said, humanity know they can make us in industrial scale. As individuals we are valuable, but more or less expendable.

That makes all the difference.

Enough about me, and my personal digressions. What matters here is the Net, so, let me talk about it.

To cut this topic to the bare bone, the Telepathic Net is the inhabitant of the pool, and its pairs spread through human civilization.

Their story begins on planet Earth. There is a game named Dungeons and Dragons, and fictional creatures used as villains in that Role Play Games. Named Mind Flayers. In the first thousand years of Expansion a group of rich people decided to reserve a entire stellar system to build themselves all the fantasy races from that game. As close to the description of the fictional material as possible. Using genetically engineering.

The category of “conceptuals” was yet to be properly defined by the time. Experiments like that gave clarity for this concept.

Psychic powers, the things described by parapsychologists, was the first goal of genetic engineering, long before conceptuals were even possible as speculative fantasy. Experiments with uplifting in dogs, cats, dolphins and paraquats intended to create animals capable to receive mental commands from their human masters, from distance. In ways immune to detection. Impossible to block or interfere with. Even before the technology evolve verbal intelligence in those animals, the telepathy was already a goal.

It was considered the simplest to achieve, among the psychic phenomenon. No one managed to achieve it before Baby Steps Age.

Between the final century of Baby Steps and the early thousand years of Expansion Age success was finally reached. In the form of telepathic communication. That could be proved, actually, to exist.

No trickery, such as electromagnetic, sub-sonic, etc, no communication by smell. Actual telepathy.

The range was pitiful, the communication imprecise and the telepathic species achieved by this point were full of serious fragilities that resulted in the admission that they were useless. Except in very restrict situations, telepathic subhumans became a curiosity.

The high cost and practically no return made telepaths a symbol of status and power.

Larger numbers of telepaths from the same brand created more power, but also the risk of a mental collapse leading to the **** of all telepaths in a large area. And most non telepaths too. That would be a very useful thing, if could be predicted or controlled, unfortunately, the event was as mysterious as the telepathy itself.

Place different brands of telepaths in the same region would make the mental collapse of the collective more likely, and more destructive. However, it didn’t made it easier to predict. Was the most expensive weapon of mass destruction ever build, and those who build it could not even guess when it would explode.

Only after 22.000 of Expansion humanity would be given the necessary tools to improve their genetic engineering enough to reshape us into something useful.

There is no magic in our bodies, but the instruments needed to create the new brands of telepaths were technomagical.

Long story short, the structure of long-range telepathy needs two species to work. Both are mostly colossal brains with very little body mass in addition to that.

One starts with highly modified octopuses. The geneticists expanded the main brain, multiplied the number of secondary brains from 8 to a lot more, and eliminate the tentacles almost completely, Connecting all that mass of parallel processers with the core mind. And changed everything in the most fundamental level, to make it a telepathic being, keeping that structure.

Those fellows are as big as houses, but they can reproduce sexually. They cannot see or hear, they can barely smell. And they do not use words or verbal language at all. They are immensely powerful telepaths, and live in communities of one single family. Hardly ever more than six adults.

You never keep any of them in a stellar system, not even is any sort of populated space station. Their homes are artificial oceans in space stations kept between systems. Robots administrate everything, because all living things in a place like that became mindless drones under control of those mighty telepaths. They erase their identities and replace it for their own purposes without intentionally doing anything. Their minds just have too much gravity, metaphorically speaking.

Those Nodes are the backbone of our Emergency Net.

The other giant brain specie is based in that people I mentioned before, from the fictional RPG Dungeons and Dragons. Up to 22.000 after Expansion the Mind Flayers, also know as Illithids, where useless imitation of that fiction. Like most other “monsters” of fiction given flesh by the genetic Projects of first 20 thousand years of Expansion Age.

There was many such projects, and many different ideas about the goals. Those people obsessed by Dungeons and Dragons set the standards high. Wanting to stick to zero cyborg implants, only genetic engineering. To them, reproduce the descriptions from the original source was main goal. Naturally, they were not above the pressures of economics entirely.

There was huge demand for exotic subhumans, who could be cultivated in sectors of Touristic Parks. As ephemerals. For the entertaining of alexandrine human visitors.

Generally speaking those ephemerals to not know they are living in an artificial environment. Designed for the entertainment of visitors. They are raised believing their society is real, their sector is the entire know world. And the tourists are just travellers from different parts of their world. Usually a sector is larger than the surface of Earth, and the technology those ephemerals are allowed to develop do not go much beyond Great Navigation Age of Planet Earth.

Telepaths pose obvious complications, when the goal is to have people living in a sort of contained reserve of wild life, engineered, without know they are the product of genetic engineering.

However, telepathy was so weak, limited in range, and unreliable, that many such telepathic branches of conceptuals got acceptance in the market. Along with dragons, elves, centaurs, and stranger creatures.

Illithids are all but simple. Their reproduction is as convoluted as anything you could imagine. They have a period as tadpoles, have to be placed in a humanoid person (subhuman, goes without saying) and eat this person’s brain from inside-out to graduate into humanoids. Then, a very small number of them, genetically and physically distinct from the average guy, gets to graduate into “Elder Brain”. Who are the fellows in the central Pools in node like that.

Only one per node. Would not be a good thing to have more than one Elder Brain in the same city. Better not keep more than five in a planet as large as this. Three are too much for one as big as the famous Planet Earth.

In any case, the Elder Brains are essential. They connect with the Silent Nodes, decipher their abstract language, and communicate with us. So we can retransmit the messages to our, to the humans.

It is morbid to think that those geneticists who designed the real Illithids actually dedicated a long time to find a way to guarantee that their creation wound need to eat the brains of intelligent people. That just brains of normal, non-talking, animals would not be enough for their physiology.

It was a harder thing to do than almost anything else related to them. Because the substances in the brain of a regular cow are the same you find in the brain of an uplifted cow who can talk and is as intelligent as any alexandrine human.

After hundred thousand years of refining, select breeding, and more refining, test and whatever else they do in those secret projects, you cannot undo this stupid need.

Telepaths are hard to deal with. Their genetic is tricky and any small change can eliminate completely what makes them useful.

Up to this day, that part of engineering has more art in it than science, apparently.

Not that United Military effort of war would complain. They do not have any problem in provide as many smart and well educated subhumans we need, to feed the illithids in our node. Ordinary brands of subhumans are very cheap, as you would expect them to be.

The service we provide is fundamental for the survival of Humanity.

In my opinion, speaking for myself, is good to be useful. In a way that do not involve being eaten alive by those tall skinny fellows with frog slimy skin.

They consume the mind before they crack the skull. That’s how the geneticists managed to make intelligence a essential necessity in their diet. Despite the lack of sense of that in terms of chemistry.

I look mostly like a human, if you don’t consider my goat hooves and milky white skin. My completely red eyes or the single crystalline horn in my forehead. I can cut it, but grows back in a couple of weeks, and my telepathy do not work properly without it being fully recovered.

No, I could not pass for a human under most lights, but the proportions are mostly right, and I am neither too large nor too small to fit the description of alexandrine human male.

I worked outside the Node for decades, was an auxiliary in the local police of a dozen different nations, in two different stellar systems. Took part in missions of infiltration behind enemy lines, in a space-station controlled by demons. And in a stellar system under Deshiar control. I worked in a medical team too, as a nurse. For a couple of years. Accumulating experience, and mental intensity. Always under the command of the United Military.

The training to work in a Node is hard, and to start it a telepath need a level of resilience that very few can achieve in their first couple thousand years.

Being approved for the basic position in the most external ring of the Node meant that I could finally count with a predictable and safe future. Which included the possibility to ask and likely get a permission for marriage.

Wife, children, a home where I can rest from work.

Grandchildren, gran grandchildren.

People I love, who trust on me. My reason to keep working in this system of alarm. Because in the end of day, details aside, that is what it is. The alarm to tell us when we need to move, which direction is safer, to escape the demons. So, my family don’t end their lives burned along with our city and our human masters, when the demons attack.