Chapter 56

I have seen enough death of my enemies on this planet: feral earthlings, strange predators, battlebots gone haywire. And now, aliens from the other end of the Universe.

Humankind dreamed of making the Contact for centuries, and looks like it wasn`t that successful. What can I say: I wouldn`t have been my first choice for such a critical event. I`m no politician, I`m a soldier of the Earth Federation. There is no objective more important for me than keeping as many of men alive as possible: those under my command, allies, civilians. And if some alien egghead decides to shoot down a ship with a human crew on board without giving me any reason for it – the time for negotiations has passed.

And they did not have any solid reasons to shoot down the expedition from Earth. Presumably, that ship`s arrival could benefit Xi. Sounds nuts. Whatever it is, human lives are too high a price to pay. I`m sure we can deal with Xi alone, without those Collectors. I mean, I`ve got to give credit where credit`s due: they managed to keep Xi in a cage for so many years, keeping populated worlds safe from it. But now the Earth Federation will take care of that. Yes, I`ve done my duty. I followed the regulations and my own conscience. I did the only right thing. Still… It did not feel right. The Collectors knew more about Xi than anyone else in the Universe. They hounded it like a beast into this enclosure made of obelisks, and when Dominion blew everything here to hell, they returned and survived in that nightmare. To be fair, though, they had the right equipment for it. They could recover during a battle, like Xi`s Hands do, so they managed to hold out here for so long. When they were killed disguised as merchants they would just pretend to be dead, come back to life and keep on tightening the noose on Xi like stubborn bloodhounds. And they caught a scent. A scent of something really dangerous… I should keep my eyes peeled, and my finger on the trigger, when our shuttle lands.

Chapter 57

Not going to lie: that hit hard. To see the help from Earth at last, the help you have almost lost all faith in, and to have this come out of the shuttle. First I thought I was seeing just another alien who killed the human crew. But it was even worse than that: it was the crew. A new human, a victim of mutations caused by the Red Plague. A typical specimen of the population reigning now on Earth – Arch-human, as they call themselves.

An autopsy and a biological examination showed that, indeed, that creature`s DNA was mostly based on those of humans, but it was deformed, nay, defaced by the virus. That creature was hideous to look at, but I was simply overwhelmed with disgust when I looked inside of its skull. My eyes were drawn to a foreign part of the brain that looked like a brilliant purple tumor, or an enormous parasite larva. Elizabeth ventured that it was not a pathology but one of the species-wide physiological mutations. That overgrown lump carries some new functions. It could be a kind of telepathic organ. Dominion went through the shuttle`s on-board computers: it turns out, mutants believe themselves to be a part of a single supercreature: Tetra-egregore. Perhaps that tumor is what causes such hallucinations. Although, why “hallucinations”? They very well may not be. I am not that skeptical about your Higher entities, having met Xi.

One way or the other, the present situation makes me feel desperate. There`s no humans left on Earth, it`s even worse than that: it`s populated now by mutants that can either turn you into one of them or kill you. And more: I think that creature has some gene sequence that can help Xi become immune to the Earth flora. Then we are between a rock and a hard place. And the rock`s already falling down.

Chapter 58

Afterword, or “Would cancer cells still live should they realize they are cancer cells?”

Every creature yearns to exist – that is the sole uniting quality of everything material and immaterial in the Universe. That`s what drives us into competition, since any life inherently the cause of a death. The whole multitude of the factors that drive us into existence, lying on the different planes of the creation in space and time, put forth an aggressive context of ultimate chaos. Where, in order to survive, powers of different magnitudes and degrees are thrown into struggle, change, evolution.

Inferior creatures tend not to even suspect the existence of the their superiors. They are simply unable to compete with something that lies completely out of their scope of perception. However, at times they do face each other on a battlefield. One such encounter was the Great Confluence launched by Xi. For humans and other sentient races Xi is but an eater of the worlds, a merciless devastating force of nature, while for the Universe it`s the impetus of its will, a display of its desire to live.

Yet that desire that drives the changes happening within the Universe is fatal for the inferior beings. And they fight back. They fight like a virus does with a vaccine: it suffers its effects, yet knows nothing about who and why have created it. On the virus`s plane, vaccine will never be recognized as a cure, and virus will never recognize itself as a pathogen. For it, the vaccine is nothing but death it will strive to defeat until the bitter end in its yearning to survive.

And the last time, the virus succeeded – the vaccine failed to fulfil its objective. Virus found a way to fight it through the Collectors who noticed the “Earth anomaly” and used it against Xi, confining it to the depths of Utopia. The virus won that battle, yet that was not the end of the war. Now the virus, consolidating all of the sentient races of the Universe, faces the threat of the improved strain of vaccine: an advanced Xi that no longer fears the Earth`s vegetation. It launches the Great Confluence yet again, aiming to absorb all existing galaxies. The Universe has given itself a shot, and virus is yet to figure out how to fight it. The Final War is coming – the unimaginable confrontation where the desires to live of the Universe itself and the ‘parasites` that infested it will clash.

Bonus Images