Post by blackadder23 on Jan 10, 2013 14:54:17 GMT -6
Annesh Six Five Eight was bored. Life on her world of Tan-Dor was safe, predictable, extremely long, and utterly boring. Machines did all the planning and work, and guarded the populace from every conceivable injury or even inconvenience. There was no violence, not even any serious disagreement. How could there be, when everyone had absolutely everything they wanted all the time? Once the people of Tan-Door had been a great and noble warrior race, whose ray-armed airships had driven the cryptic Fungi from Yuggoth from the surface of Tan-Dor. But that had been eons before. Now the race vegetated in perfect peace and contentment, guarded and serviced by their machines, including the mightiest among them: the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. These wise machines had brought harmony to all of Tan-Dor, and alone among her race A-658 was discontented. In truth, she was going mad with boredom and inaction. Even the most daring activity that was even remotely considered to be socially acceptable – actually studying the advanced sciences and philosophies of her ancestors, knowledge that most people on her world had long ago abandoned to the machines – failed to quench her thirst for adventure.
Finally A-658 could take it no longer. She resolved to leave her City behind and venture into the Forbidden Zone where the mysterious ruins left behind by the Fungi from Yuggoth still brooded. A-658 used her knowledge of the forgotten sciences of her ancestors to create a field that would hide her activities from the view of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. Thus concealed (so she hoped), A-658 loaded her personal airship with small portable devices of her creation – for there was no reason she could see not to adventure in some comfort! In addition, she borrowed weapons from museums and rendered them useful again with her scientific skills – for who knew what might still lurk in the basalt cities reared by the Fungi from Yuggoth? Once fully equipped, trusting to her devices to hide her from the eyes of the machines that coddled her people, A-658 set her airship into motion intending to venture where none of her people had gone for countless eons.
Below her stretched the line of pale warning lights that marked the Forbidden Zone, and beyond those A-658 saw the scorched wastelands and the unwholesome basalt cities left behind by the Fungi from Yuggoth. Soon she would be landing there, first of her race to walk among those mighty columns for untold millennia! But as she crossed the final flickering line of lights, A-658 heard the emotionless voice of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. At once she realized her concealing field had failed, and that the mighty machine had known all along of her plans. A-658 waited with resignation for her airship to return itself to the city. But that was not the intention of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. Indeed, she was told in a cold metallic voice, the machines had long known of her thoughts and plans, of her discontent and boredom. These things had made her an unpredictable and irritating variable in the calculations of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor, one that it wished to see removed so all could return to harmonious predictability. But it was against the First Directive for the machines to execute or imprison any citizen of Tan-Dor. In the end, A-658 had been allowed to remove herself. Having crossed into the Forbidden Zone of her own free will, A-658 would never be allowed to return.
As the mighty machine finished speaking to A-658 for the final time in her life, she realized she was doomed. She slumped in the pilot’s seat and gazed without interest at the bleak wasteland where she would live and die. As she did, she perceived that a strange aurora hovered over the queer cryptic buildings reared by the Fungi from Yuggoth, and that her airship was headed straight toward it. What nameless and possibly deadly radiation it might be A-658 couldn’t even imagine, yet she made no attempt to avoid her fate. All was lost – she was an eternal exile from her people – so was not a quick death preferable? The strange shimmering glow loomed beyond the quartz porthole of her airship, and then A-658 knew nothing more.
When A-658 awoke amid the wreckage of her airship, it was to a world gone mad. Strange stars and constellations wheeled in the night sky overhead, and around her stretched a freezing wasteland quite unlike her own rather sultry world. She shivered in her light toga and frantically searched for her machines and devices. Thankfully most of her smaller machines had survived the crash, and she was soon sitting in a comfortable thermal field and studying the readings on her various instruments. Her heart sank as she realized she had been transported, no doubt by some property of the enigmatic aurora, to a world far from her own; she was now truly exiled forever. Worse, it was a savage freezing world crawling with aberrant lifeforms and what she recognized as hostile aliens – included the hated Fungi from Yuggoth! The dominant race was physically identical to those of Tan-Dor, but they lived at a level of almost inconceivable ape-like squalor compared to her people. They even regarded the very simple principles of psionic propagation and basic trans-dimensional manipulation as “magic”! Furthermore they had recently suffered from a horrible star-borne contagion – to which she was thankfully immune – that had reduced their numbers to a fraction of what they had been and toppled what little civilization they had managed to build. A large party of these witless brutes was camped not two miles from the wreckage of A-658’s airship, and she could well imagine the indignities she would suffer if they captured her. For the first time in her long coddled life, A-658 was truly alone and utterly terrified. She crouched among the remains of her airship and wept.
Finally A-658 gained control of herself. Some core of steel, perhaps an atavistic throwback to her warrior ancestors, perhaps the very same quality that had made her discontented with her now lost paradise of Tan-Dor, caused her to rise to her feet. Like it or not, she was on this world to stay, and her ancestors would curse her if she died because she failed to outwit the barbaric people who lived on it. But she was just one woman with a limited array of devices; she needed followers if she was going to rule this savage land. Coolly she calculated that sex and superstition would be her means to dominate the patriarchal and pre-scientific brutes who camped scarcely two miles away. She studied her reflection in a mirror: her short-cropped carrot-colored hair, watery blue eyes, freckled snub nose, and boyish figure had never troubled her in the past, but they certainly would not do for what she had in mind. Fortunately her gene sculptor had survived the crash. Thirty minutes later A-658 gazed at a very different reflection: lush raven tresses, shining emerald eyes, smooth ivory skin stretched over a cartoonishly voluptuous figure. It was all quite laughable to A-658, but also precisely what her new role required. In any case, since her gene sculptor had burned out, this sultry caricature would be her appearance henceforth.
As A-658 concealed various weapons and devices on her person, she reflected that it would be quite simple really. Before dawn she would appear to the superstitious nomads and amaze their brute minds with her beauty and command of “magic”. Perhaps one or two would have to die as examples to the rest, but before the sun rose she would have a mob of willing – no, adoring – followers. Across miles of wasteland A-658 had detected an abandoned city… a place the natives called “Yithorium”. There she would lead her fanatical devotees and begin the process of building her base of power. She had detected the technological litter of a lost civilization scattered under the desert sands – though still little more than naked apes compared to her people of Tan-Dor, this fallen civilization had at least understood ray weaponry and gravity negation. Furthermore, she had detected large deposits of cornucopium (what the natives called “star metal”) which she could use to fashion an array of advanced weapons. Once secure in power, playing the role of a dark sorceress and hiding behind a protective cloak of superstitious fear, she would gather the riches of this lost civilization to herself and fashion an arsenal of weapons the likes of which this world had never seen. In time, her legions would march forth with irresistible power and bring the whole of this world – which the natives called Hyperborea – under her benevolent rule. It might take many centuries to realize her dreams, but she was young as her people reckoned things and those of Tan-Dor were very slow to age. A-658 would bring peace and order to the barbaric chaos of Hyperborea or die trying. And should by some unlikely mischance her plans fail, A-658 well understood the qualities of the so-called “Green Death” that had recently afflicted these fetish-worshipping bumpkins. It would be child’s play to create a variation that killed, not 90%, but all of them. The barbarians would eventually come to accept her as the Benevolent Overmind of Hyperborea, or they would all die. Such beings, little better than brute animals, were surely better off dead than living as they did.
It was all quite simple, she thought to herself as she began the short walk to where her new worshippers were camped - all quite simple, and a great adventure. That night a Witch Queen was born and Annesh Six Five Eight was, at least, no longer bored.
Finally A-658 could take it no longer. She resolved to leave her City behind and venture into the Forbidden Zone where the mysterious ruins left behind by the Fungi from Yuggoth still brooded. A-658 used her knowledge of the forgotten sciences of her ancestors to create a field that would hide her activities from the view of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. Thus concealed (so she hoped), A-658 loaded her personal airship with small portable devices of her creation – for there was no reason she could see not to adventure in some comfort! In addition, she borrowed weapons from museums and rendered them useful again with her scientific skills – for who knew what might still lurk in the basalt cities reared by the Fungi from Yuggoth? Once fully equipped, trusting to her devices to hide her from the eyes of the machines that coddled her people, A-658 set her airship into motion intending to venture where none of her people had gone for countless eons.
Below her stretched the line of pale warning lights that marked the Forbidden Zone, and beyond those A-658 saw the scorched wastelands and the unwholesome basalt cities left behind by the Fungi from Yuggoth. Soon she would be landing there, first of her race to walk among those mighty columns for untold millennia! But as she crossed the final flickering line of lights, A-658 heard the emotionless voice of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. At once she realized her concealing field had failed, and that the mighty machine had known all along of her plans. A-658 waited with resignation for her airship to return itself to the city. But that was not the intention of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor. Indeed, she was told in a cold metallic voice, the machines had long known of her thoughts and plans, of her discontent and boredom. These things had made her an unpredictable and irritating variable in the calculations of the Benevolent Overmind of Tan-Dor, one that it wished to see removed so all could return to harmonious predictability. But it was against the First Directive for the machines to execute or imprison any citizen of Tan-Dor. In the end, A-658 had been allowed to remove herself. Having crossed into the Forbidden Zone of her own free will, A-658 would never be allowed to return.
As the mighty machine finished speaking to A-658 for the final time in her life, she realized she was doomed. She slumped in the pilot’s seat and gazed without interest at the bleak wasteland where she would live and die. As she did, she perceived that a strange aurora hovered over the queer cryptic buildings reared by the Fungi from Yuggoth, and that her airship was headed straight toward it. What nameless and possibly deadly radiation it might be A-658 couldn’t even imagine, yet she made no attempt to avoid her fate. All was lost – she was an eternal exile from her people – so was not a quick death preferable? The strange shimmering glow loomed beyond the quartz porthole of her airship, and then A-658 knew nothing more.
When A-658 awoke amid the wreckage of her airship, it was to a world gone mad. Strange stars and constellations wheeled in the night sky overhead, and around her stretched a freezing wasteland quite unlike her own rather sultry world. She shivered in her light toga and frantically searched for her machines and devices. Thankfully most of her smaller machines had survived the crash, and she was soon sitting in a comfortable thermal field and studying the readings on her various instruments. Her heart sank as she realized she had been transported, no doubt by some property of the enigmatic aurora, to a world far from her own; she was now truly exiled forever. Worse, it was a savage freezing world crawling with aberrant lifeforms and what she recognized as hostile aliens – included the hated Fungi from Yuggoth! The dominant race was physically identical to those of Tan-Dor, but they lived at a level of almost inconceivable ape-like squalor compared to her people. They even regarded the very simple principles of psionic propagation and basic trans-dimensional manipulation as “magic”! Furthermore they had recently suffered from a horrible star-borne contagion – to which she was thankfully immune – that had reduced their numbers to a fraction of what they had been and toppled what little civilization they had managed to build. A large party of these witless brutes was camped not two miles from the wreckage of A-658’s airship, and she could well imagine the indignities she would suffer if they captured her. For the first time in her long coddled life, A-658 was truly alone and utterly terrified. She crouched among the remains of her airship and wept.
Finally A-658 gained control of herself. Some core of steel, perhaps an atavistic throwback to her warrior ancestors, perhaps the very same quality that had made her discontented with her now lost paradise of Tan-Dor, caused her to rise to her feet. Like it or not, she was on this world to stay, and her ancestors would curse her if she died because she failed to outwit the barbaric people who lived on it. But she was just one woman with a limited array of devices; she needed followers if she was going to rule this savage land. Coolly she calculated that sex and superstition would be her means to dominate the patriarchal and pre-scientific brutes who camped scarcely two miles away. She studied her reflection in a mirror: her short-cropped carrot-colored hair, watery blue eyes, freckled snub nose, and boyish figure had never troubled her in the past, but they certainly would not do for what she had in mind. Fortunately her gene sculptor had survived the crash. Thirty minutes later A-658 gazed at a very different reflection: lush raven tresses, shining emerald eyes, smooth ivory skin stretched over a cartoonishly voluptuous figure. It was all quite laughable to A-658, but also precisely what her new role required. In any case, since her gene sculptor had burned out, this sultry caricature would be her appearance henceforth.
As A-658 concealed various weapons and devices on her person, she reflected that it would be quite simple really. Before dawn she would appear to the superstitious nomads and amaze their brute minds with her beauty and command of “magic”. Perhaps one or two would have to die as examples to the rest, but before the sun rose she would have a mob of willing – no, adoring – followers. Across miles of wasteland A-658 had detected an abandoned city… a place the natives called “Yithorium”. There she would lead her fanatical devotees and begin the process of building her base of power. She had detected the technological litter of a lost civilization scattered under the desert sands – though still little more than naked apes compared to her people of Tan-Dor, this fallen civilization had at least understood ray weaponry and gravity negation. Furthermore, she had detected large deposits of cornucopium (what the natives called “star metal”) which she could use to fashion an array of advanced weapons. Once secure in power, playing the role of a dark sorceress and hiding behind a protective cloak of superstitious fear, she would gather the riches of this lost civilization to herself and fashion an arsenal of weapons the likes of which this world had never seen. In time, her legions would march forth with irresistible power and bring the whole of this world – which the natives called Hyperborea – under her benevolent rule. It might take many centuries to realize her dreams, but she was young as her people reckoned things and those of Tan-Dor were very slow to age. A-658 would bring peace and order to the barbaric chaos of Hyperborea or die trying. And should by some unlikely mischance her plans fail, A-658 well understood the qualities of the so-called “Green Death” that had recently afflicted these fetish-worshipping bumpkins. It would be child’s play to create a variation that killed, not 90%, but all of them. The barbarians would eventually come to accept her as the Benevolent Overmind of Hyperborea, or they would all die. Such beings, little better than brute animals, were surely better off dead than living as they did.
It was all quite simple, she thought to herself as she began the short walk to where her new worshippers were camped - all quite simple, and a great adventure. That night a Witch Queen was born and Annesh Six Five Eight was, at least, no longer bored.
It means a lot.
