War. One could argue it’s the natural state of human affairs. That is to say, throughout history, more time had we spent at war than at peace. For untold millennia we fought for food, and then land to produce such food. A speckle of land delimited by an imaginary line in a tiny wet rock we call “planet”. It would already be enough to cause millions of human deaths. Then, we fought for other things, ever more trivial. Fossil fuels, rare elements, nuclear sources, technology, green papers with people’s faces printed it. All the more we didn’t actually need, but we wanted anyway. We ended up building the most dangerous of weapons, quantum destabilizers. Devices that could affect atomic particles’ cohesion on a fundamental level to easily annihilate everyone and everything in range of a few star systems if used. Mankind, still stuck on Earth, a menace in more places than what it could even hope to physically reach within a lifetime. The taste of victory is numb when you taste necessary defeat, and the knowledge of mutually assured destruction is at best a bittersweet feeling when everyone you cared about was also gone. It didn’t stop us from using nuclear weapons, but thankfully, at the very least it stopped us from using the quantum destabilizers.
For a time.
It was only when a scientist managed to inventively use a piece of said technology to actually do the opposite of what it was devised to do, that peace could be achieved. Through the inverse polarization and modulation of the functions on the quantum destabilizers, he was able to turn them into what was then named stabilizers. Such stability allowed anyone safe passage through a “breach” in space time, essentially reducing the concept of shortest distance between two points to zero. Gravitational locking allowed that portal to be stationary on Earth and in any other celestial body massive enough to be called even a dwarf planet.
It was revolutionary. Space faring missions that would never be approved before came through, explorations that would take decades, centuries, were shortened to a few weeks needed to calculate the transfer functions with precision, and a few months to slowly accelerate the expeditionaries through conventional means up to a speed and direction such that when they passed through the breach, their conservation of momentum meant that they would be aligned with the foreign planet’s own movement, and not be flattened against the other planet’s surface nor leave its orbit in escape velocity.
Things were finally looking good for humanity. In fact, they were looking nothing short of great. A whole universe to explore, full of riches, fame and opportunity.
Entire asteroids made of diamonds and other rare materials could be mined and its resources brought back to Earth. In time, humans also managed to establish livable colonies on the Moon, Mars, Europa. Just as an attempt, as governments agreed to a test drive before we get a little too ambitious.
Then, we went further. Outside our solar system, there were a lot of planets. Some, special planets. Goldilocks zone. Ice or even water on surface, maybe oxygen. Underground caves of carbon, providing resistance against the star’s dangerous radiation even when the atmosphere or lack thereof would not. Those were habitable. Or at least, could be made into. With a lot of work sure, but still not prohibitive amounts of effort. Colonies started branching out of Sol to those other star systems, shy attempts at first, then explosive expansion followed after the successes and failures of the first tries, when we finally got the hang of it.
“I was once a leader of such a colony. Danegor, fourth expansion wave. Great place to live, after properly settled. Maybe just a bit too hot at the summer, even with all the insulation. Oh, and the days had eighteenish-plus-something Earth-hours, so you rarely felt like you accomplished the same in a days’ work as you did on Earth, but that’s okay. You eventually get used to the routine, and then when you took a vacation back on Earth, New Monaco or maybe Paradisian if you’re fancy, you feel as if you have all the time in the world you’d ever want in your day during the best of possible vacations. Can’t go wrong with that, really. But alas, I digress.
I’m teaching all of you of how humanity Fell.”
It was a time of hope and exploration like none other, forget about the Age of Sail, we were riding comets if we wanted to. And we damn wanted to. Yet the more we explored the universe, the more places we could be and the farther we could see. And the more places we’d been, ever more in the universe, we felt alone. In all those new Earth-like planets discovered left and right from our new, ever farther-reaching forward bases, we’d never find someone, or something, to greet us back. Not a microbe, not a green alien guy, not a single forgotten ruin. False alarms and impostors appeared, of course, but never any solid evidence that stood up to scientific scrutiny. In what seemed like a truly infinite Universe, we were all alone.
Until “They” came.
One day, They came from the breach. They appeared on Visayas 2 at first, our last successfully established breach. One specimen. Some crawly thing, the size of a large dog. All black, but not like what you think is black. It had no visible features. No contour lines. It was as if our very own light was alien to this thing. We watched, in amusement, as passerby took out their phones and started streaming its movements through the holonet. We watched as media teams tried to move to the place, struggling to beat each other to the scene. As two police officers on leave were trying to cordon off the breach and slightly comically failing, as more and more curious people showed up. Within a minute, it was instant news on the entirety of human systems. A mixed feeling of both curiosity and fear for the unknown overtook the human space as we watched that thing do this stumbling around, appearing disoriented.
Contact was so unexpected after more than a century of false alarms on extra-terrestrial searching, that no one had come up with agreeable names, apart from troll comments. So, over the holonet we were just calling it “It”. Regardless of the name, we knew history was being written before our eyes. Still, It was just stumbling around and more guards were arriving in the scene and being a pain trying to cover the holovideos. Just when watching It do nothing interesting had started to get boring, a kid struggled out of the grip of his mom and dived through the nearby police line, who were still pushing journalists back and waiting for whatever backup was coming. The kid approached It, who was still moving erratically around the breach.
The mother yelled in terror as the nearby officer turned and realized her son had passed through his legs.
And the Fall started before that officer could catch up to the kid.
The boy creeped up to It and gave It a hug.
It ate him.
Not like one might take a bite of an apple, and more like an ameba would try to phagocytize another microorganism. The darkness spread around the kid and soon he was no longer visible. And then It got bigger.
Screams of terror from all the people gathered covered the scene as in that moment, a second appeared from the breach, then a third, and we had to start calling it “They”.
The innocent, almost cute stumbling around act was gone. With intent, They had started to go after people. The officers unloaded a barrage of fire but to no avail, as They only got bigger.
Reports came from everywhere at once. More kept appearing from the breach. All breaches. In the confusion, someone had managed to turn the Visayas breach off but by then it was too late. Throughout the 128 inhabited planets of the known space, They were already swarming through every open breach by the billions, like an endless flood of black, ever bigger alien spiderthings.
Every military force was put into high alert, every missile primed, every possible alarm was sounded.
And one by one they went silent.
Until the last resource was used. Outmatched, humanity had opted for the mutually assured destruction. In a final push, the breaches were opened, and the quantum destabilizer was set. And throughout the galaxy, the 128 breaches and their respective systems were no more.
Only an incoherent mess of quarks, gluons, and other elementary particles remained, not collapsing into anything, unable to ever be anything again.
Which brings us to Solitarium, the point of no return.
It was a penal colony. The worst of them, because the breach was only one way. A forgotten planet to where humanity sent its worst criminals, people who would not ever hope to be reintegrated into society, yet had not been deemed to the death penalty or such penalty was not applicable under their planet’s law. The breach to Solitarium was closed most of the time, being open for only a few seconds while a new inmate followed through, escorted to his cell by security bots on both sides. Ironically, the reason they were permanently stuck there was also the single reason they had survived. The redundant security systems would not allow for a breach to be opened to the prison without confirming an incoming prisoner transfer request.
“I told all of you I was once the leader of a colony, right?
Well, can you guess how I ended up here? No idea, right.
You see, Danegor was going a bit too unwell economically.
Those previous government officials were incompetent to the core. Some big corporation guy from Earth sent his son to be an Acting Regent, and the boy was as much of a jerk as they can be. All high and mighty, the kid was useless in a position of power. He absolutely had to be taken down.
I was not much of a preacher, but at the very least I knew what I was doing. I had a job in the Danegor’s Ministry as accountant then. Somehow, I got almost the entirety of the Ministry’s support. I would think it was not as much as geniality than just being at the right place at the right time. My administration training back on Earth came in useful. As the accountant, was fully aware of the Regent’s flawed politics, budget deviations and generally terrible management of finances. In secret, I’d just spoken out against his inefficient government with some colleagues from work and listed a few measures I’d take instead from the top of my mind. It wasn’t supposed to be anything big but they said I would do a job hundreds of times better. I think maybe as a joke, someone passed around a memo on the backstage of the Ministry’s holomails. Next thing I know mostly everyone I knew was supporting me for the next Acting Regent.
Meanwhile, the citizens were pissed. Talks about the corruption were spreading. Some were even gathering for things like rebellion and staging a coup. The last straw was when crime got so bad, abductions were happening. People missing, planetary police always unable to find them. Eventually protests came out every day and we couldn’t even get to the Ministry’s main building.
I wondered if I should have just gone home on that day, but I didn’t. That day the protest intensified, and the planetary guard was called upon to intervene. As they deployed from their ships to barring the gates, the protesters’ shouts of anger escalated. In the confusion, fights were starting to break out. Except they were armed, and we were not. A bloodbath seemed imminent. Instead, surprisingly enough, revolution played out.
The army stood aside, some even joined us in breaking into the Ministry. Somehow the Regent was incompetent enough to keep the local military under his payroll.
And, for being at the front of it all, my colleagues proposed my application as Temporary Regent and compiled a list of other proposals I’d talked over work. The Ministries voted for me. The Interplanetary Republic deemed the situation solved without relevant losses and actually acknowledged my claim to government. The playboy was already out of planet, anyway. It seems he’d escaped back to Earth, only to be disinherited by his family. Some say that it was too light a punishment, but we couldn’t do anything else without initiating an interplanetary diplomatic incident.
I could now prove myself by doing every single move he should have been doing in the first place. Now, for being in the government, I subtly had my face surgically altered into being physically incapable of showing emotion. It was necessary in order to improve my negotiation skills, which were lacking before, or those business snakes would read me all over.
I’m very fine with it nowadays, I’d even say my pokerface fits me more.
All was going well, until one day someone knocked on my door.
A gallant man, clothed like some imperial renaissance noble, too charming for being just another business suit. He strolled into my office in the middle of a meeting. Somehow all the district governors got their cue and left the room, leaving me and him alone. The corrupt bastards. Only I didn’t know him at the time. He took out his pointy hat and introduced himself like a gentleman would.
Then I realized what was happening.
You see, that fucker of an ex-regent was involved with this guy in some deviant slave trading. The abductions were his fault all along. And now the middle man was knocking on my door, and he was called Morgan, the legendary pirate lord. And elusive criminal, wanted on almost every world who still has the nerve to show himself to a Regent face to face. Although he was indeed the leader of a multi-system criminal syndicate empire, and I was a recently appointed Regent who hadn’t even properly finished restructuring the planetary guard’s payroll. Great, it would seem obvious that he came to tax me. For “protection”. That was what I expected him to say, but he greeted me by name, extended a hand and said he hoped we’d be good business partners together. Also, that the previous government owed him a lot, and he just asked for my business card.
For three hours we argued. Finally, in the end I convinced him to leave without any new slaves, just a fraction of the money he initially claimed the previous Regent owed him, and weirdly enough, my holonumber.
I threw my holophone in the garbage in the same afternoon and prepared to strengthen the planetary army, should he attempt to come back demanding anything else.
After this deal I had hoped to never see him again, but much to my initial chagrin, he did visit again. In fact, his visits turned ever more frequent. It did not matter for me to change the guards since he always found a manner of bribing them or getting in anyway. But never again did he demand anything from me. In the end, I just allowed it, as the expense from the rotation of guards was simply not a cost-effective move if all Morgan was doing was just sitting there. I could bring myself to manage things while he was on the room. He’d try to make small talk, but not so much as to be a nuisance. Sometimes he would just stand there, watch me work, maybe fumble around with some things in my desk. Attempt a joke. Ask me how’s it going. Obviously, I completely ignored him, for I believed that he would eventually get a grip of the situation, get bored and leave, maybe forever. He can’t demand anything from me. Yet time and again, that only managed to make him come back trying to make me laugh with a new joke or some other thing. The poor fool probably doesn’t realize I can’t even smirk with my face. Or maybe he did realize eventually, but he still kept coming. After a few months, he noted on how Danegor’s economy was doing a lot better now, with me in charge. As usual, I demanded he left before I called the Galpol. Instead he proposed a deal where he agreed on stopping all slave trade within his organization if I helped him balance out some other deficits. Well, simple enough. By this time, I had already nominated better people and embedded some sense into the district managers, so the economy was already getting to be mostly self-reliant. I could spare the time.
Some years went by like this, and somehow, he felt it was appropriate to ask me, of all people, to watch a holomovie. A romantic comedy, at that.
For some reason I still can’t fathom, I accepted.
Now, he was indeed a scumbag and I will not try to persuade you of the contrary. He was a criminal and a villain of a person, but maybe not as much as you might think. Only as much a scumbag as basically everyone is, or would be, given the position he was. No torturing for fun or any of the sort, for him it was all just business. I disagreed with the methods, but couldn’t argue the results were very effective. Yet, I slowly managed to persuade him of abandoning some barbaric moves, and use much more exquisite tactics, capable of achieving similar or better results of course.
After the happiest years of our lives, he was stricken with a sudden degenerative disease that the best doctors in the galaxy had no idea how to fight. My ground was shaken.
So I made my fatal mistake. You see, up until then I had trusted mankind’s peace times would be everlasting. Resources were abundant throughout the mapped universe, so there would be no reason for costly wars when you could just open a breach into a pure gold asteroid and mine it many infinitely more safely. It simply wouldn’t be an effective way of dealing with our technology. Surely, there was still crimes and criminals. Indeed, I was living with the biggest of them. But we could, as a species, leave that all behind. I truly believed that from here on out, for humanity, the concept of war was over.
In the final moments of his life, I asked him to repent and confess his crimes.
He told me it was a terrible idea. I insisted he did so anyway. He had discussed it many times before. Again and again he disagreed with me. But I had my points. Even if they tried us, by that time I had already made enough to cover refunding expenses through legal means. Yet now, I realize at that time I didn’t take into account quite a major factor. Mankind’s desire for vengeance.
He still argued back, but in the very end, like in all things, he conceded to me. For the last time. He called for a priest and a government official. And then he talked of all the things he had done. He asked for forgiveness, and in the end, Morgan parted this world looking at me with a smile.
When it was over, his pirate empire was crumbled by no less than thirty interplanetary security agencies. Most of his subordinates were caught by surprise or in their sleep, with no idea what had happened. The government official also didn’t keep his promise. For complicity, I was sent here.
And that’s my story. From a boring kid, to an accountant, to administrator, to Regent, to public enemy number one. Solitarium has been my home ever since, and I’ve had many time to reflect upon my actions.”
A sinister chill ran through my spine as I watched civilization’s final moments, locked up, before the holovid screens shut off in the hall, and the prison’s alarm bells stopped.
I still remember that day, clear as if it happened minutes ago. Part because of the sheer shock, part courtesy from a friend, to make us all remember it clearly, forever.
So the last of the sirens went quiet and I was just alone, in my cell. A prisoner of a government no longer existed. Not much later the power systems keeping the doors shut failed.
We left our cells in a hurry, took on whatever passed for weapons, chairs, utensils, and waited. We waited for the moment our enemies would come swarming through the portal, as we watched they do everywhere else through the high alert emergency holovid the security bots transmitted on all frequencies.
But They didn’t come. The breach was shut down.
It slowly dawned on us that They were not coming. But at the same time, no one else would. We were alone. We, as prisoners, and I specifically, a midsized, non-combatant woman alone in a band that contained some of the galaxy’s most dangerous men. A pinch of terror creeped into my mind. But I would not let it end like this. Not when there were still things of the utmost importance that needed to be done.
Whatever I did, I had to take control of the situation. I just had to win the most people to my side, again. I can do this.
A hand brushed my shoulder.
I looked behind. A brute of a man was standing there, his head well above the bulk of the other prisoners, looking at me.
-Torque!
He kneeled down and curved his back. It was somewhat frustrating that although we were now at near-face level, he was still slightly taller than me.
-Ma’am, it really is you. I am glad to see you well.
Torque was an old acquaintance of my late husband. One of his most loyal lieutenants. Finally, at least someone I could count on in here. Thankfully, a lot of members from his old gang were here too.
Even more thankfully, it seems they didn’t know it was I who got them here.
Regardless, now I had people on my side. I quickly glanced around to assess our forces. Yes, enough to persuade the rest of the prisoners to do what I wanted them to. It seems the Pirate lord’s title was well deserved, as my husband’s subordinates accounted for the biggest and arguably most dangerous group in here.
Well then, now it was a simple matter of screening the assets available and maximizing efficiency.
I looked around, and all I could see in their faces was confusion. The mob as a whole clearly didn’t know what to do. Some internal fights were even starting to break in. Pathetic.
A shame, but seems like lots of those were just some psychos and mindless serial killers with less redeeming qualities than I could hope for. If just I could turn them into tools against They, though. Yes, I didn’t buy the whole mutual destruction. “They” were coming from breaches. Which means there might still be “They” out there, just as there are still “Us”.
Although, dealing with They would be too far ahead for me to reliably plan. Rebuilding and revenge would have to come later. What mattered now was survival, but it’s clear that with no leadership these people would go about it on an individual level. Try to steal the few resources from each other, fight each other to the death over his own survival.
The obvious choice was survival in groups. Knowing that this prison was supposed to be self-contained and the breach was closed most of the time except for prisoner admittance, it would mean somewhere in this prison these bots had means of producing food and oxygen. I could take over the greenhouse and food facilities with my group and let the others starve themselves out. At least we could weed out the vermin that way, but I wanted to make use of every asset I had.
While I was thinking, I saw a scrawny old man, smirk plastered on his face like he didn’t care for the predicament we found ourselves in at all. I recognized him immediately, since his face was all over the news months before I was sent here. At the time, someone found his homemade lab, and it was the biggest news around.
Dr. Zakowicks. Some crazy genetic scientist who got thrown in here for his unsanctioned and quite immoral experiments on human beings. I heard the fucker turned his own daughter into a dog after a holoseries or something. Says they were just having fun. Immediate sentence on trial. Whatever. He’s just what I needed to proceed with my plan. I went to him.
-We’ll repopulate humankind, you and I.
Torque choked on something, coughing for air while all the other prisoners looked at me with wide eyes. Zakowicks, on the other hand, opened one of those smiles that would need not a psychoanalyst degree to question his sanity.
Shit, am I glad I can’t express emotions. I wonder why do men always have to be such disgusting pigs.
-Not in the way you’re thinking, you sick bastard. I meant through gene splicing.
He looked at me like I was the mad scientist.
-That is precisely what I was thinking.
I wanted to shake my head. Not in front of this crowd, though. I could do better, have Torque shake his head. But not before I had no more use for his talents. Keep your cool, Erika.
-Can you do it?
-The medical facility should have all I need, for now.
-Then let’s break into there.
I looked around for the toughest looking of the badasses in front of me, evaluating their physique. Torque was a clear choice, but I didn’t want to send him off and be alone amidst those other less reputable guys. I could accompany him, but breaking through solid tungsteel could take a while even for him and I didn’t want to be near Zakowicks a moment more than necessary. His smile still creeped me out.
-That won’t be necessary, I already did.
A voice from the back of the room. Some asian teen. Didn’t look more than twenty. Wore cybernetics. She was connected to one of the security bots through some cables on her wrist. She made the security bot turn itself on, open a drawer and hand her goggles, some light batteries and other stuff that she pocketed. Then, she theatrically turned to us in a bow.
-Sakithe1, the universe’s best hacker, at your service, Pirate Queen.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just tried my best to keep my mouth shut in order not to give away my pokerface. I had a fangirl?
Besides, how could she be the universe’s best hacker if she got caught. Although, the same could be said about me. Or anyone else here, for that matter.
Zacowicks grabbed her arm and pulled her away in the direction of the medical facilities. I would even be thankful, were he not wearing his sickest smile yet.
-Thank you, Saki Dewan. Let us go to the medical lab, you shall be very useful.
-No, no it’s like Saki the… ah, whatever. Just don’t touch me, weirdo.
Ignoring the girl’s request, he kept talking over her as they moved towards the lab.
-You see, the last time I was brought there for psychoexamination, I did see in a glance that the medical lab actually has a surgery wing. Yet for some reason it seems to be locked until the medbay sensors confirm the prisoner has need of it. Such a waste, is it not? Do you think you could get one of these bots to override it?
Saki’s disgusted face aside, Zacowicks seemed like he could be useful, if I could get him to do what I needed him to. Maybe wouldn’t even have to force him to do it. He kept speaking, faster now.
-… are very special procedures that you can simulate by a bacterial protein, if only you manage to correctly isolate it. It comes quite easily with enough practice. Incidentally, did I tell you that you remind me of my daughter?
Sigh. With a head tilt, I signaled Torque to follow me. Can’t have the doctor turning our hacker into something entirely else, now.
Through gene splicing, Zacowicks was able to make the 478 prisoners of Solitarium have enough genetic variability to be reproductively safe for a few thousand generations without further editing even if no random mutations were to occur.
It seems he’s also been having the fun of his life editing more than a few genes in his experiments on some of the more… uncooperative prisoners who disagreed with my methods.
About the rest, let’s just say that having a mad scientist who could turn people incredibly uncooperative into serious, tough, intelligent, and immortal workers was most useful.
And given the present situation we’re facing, “useful” might as well be the biggest understatement in history.
Now, that we achieved an empire, my plan could proceed.
We shall take back Earth. We shall take back the Universe.
The alarm ringed.
Not a war alarm, though. Not yet.
This one just meant history class, and story time, was finished. In the improvised school sector of the arkship travelling through conventional space, one of the children raises his hand.
-But, ma’am, so Earth and all the other colonies were destroyed? Doesn’t this mean that we lost?
-No, my child. It means we’re just starting.
-But you said all our heroes are dead.
-Exactly. And that’s the worst possible move They could have done.
The kids looked at each other, confused.
-Why?
For the first time in ages, I felt like I could smile. The kids seemed even more surprised.
-Because now, only us villains are left. And They’ll wish we were heroes.
Sci Fantasy 