[ original ] Nanowrimo 2021 - Intergalactic Plague Invasion

[sativa]

Basic Premise:

A message is intercepted speaking of tragedy and a civilization lost nearly a millennia ago that may hold the key to a long ago secret that could save the universe from a new wave of terror and heartache. Can we learn from the past or are we doomed to walk in the footsteps of a long ago world instead?

Goal:

Write the story in a mixture of despotic communications from a lost world as “scene” changes intermixed with the desperate current political climate as a new, unknown plague starts a wave of destruction across the universe. Things escalate as the plague starts to shut down important supply chains and communication relay stations leaving only a few capable of rallying to save the universe.

Twist: The current inhabits/rulers of the universe are collective robot hive-mind that survived the first destruction of the universe that sought out and protected the few remaining humans. Now they are debating letting the humans know that they have been watched over and protected by the very things that they fear to allow them to advance on a new chapter in their intergalactic lives.

Bonus, the original plague was nanomites that were designed to help the “humans” prolong their lives by having them seek out and destroy cancerous cells while repairing and rejuvenating existing “good” tissue. Now, the nanomites have evolved to attack the very machines themselves, threatening an end to everything that has been built.

Nano Goals: Manage to write something daily - word count optional

Day 1 = Pass | Day 2 = Pass | Day 3 =

Total Words Written: 891

Comments

Character Sketches

[sativa]

Ship's Captain 5295 aka Rollin

[sativa]

Role in Story: Interceptor of a lost communication - he powers and runs the ship that’s an extension of himself through the darkness of space doing research for his robotic counterparts as part of the Coalition of Robotic Engineers (CORE)

Occupation: Ship’s Captain, duh!

Physical Description: Think Johnny 5 but with more flexibility, detachable limbs, and an ability to direct link to his personal ship.

Personality: He’s an older model, having crisscrossed across the galaxy over a thousand years spending more time than not by himself as he docked at various research station after research station. As such, he’s learned to make up his own entertainment, programming code, learning new things, discovering how best to keep himself young and “fresh” although more than one relay station just looks a bit askance at him whenever he opens up his proverbial mouth. Honestly, anyone would get a little loopy (or just run on an endless loop of stale old jokes) if they spend enough time alone! And Rollin is definitely no exception.

Habits/Mannerisms: He likes to pretend he’s a true seaman complete with an index of 6,873 songs about the sea saved to his permanent memory storage in addition to the 151,333 variations (and counting) he has come up with on his own in addition to the endless poems he has written in homage to his own voyage across the galaxy that he is by no means adverse to sharing with any and all who will listen and more likely not choose to listen. But despite the fixation on the romantic notions of the sea, Rollin is a very capable ship’s captain who is never late, always reliable, and immeasurably dedicated to his job.

Background: Created in the fragments of an old age, Rollin was one of the last robotics designed by the Hylinth society before the society crumbled under unknown circumstances. In the millennia since, he has routine forwarded every iota of information collected to a secret account as programmed in addition to parsing out the more mundane and potentially scientifically significant findings to the public domain.

Internal Conflicts: He’s a robot who yearns for companionship and the comfort of being contacted by those who had once made him while struggling with his sense of duty to keep to his mission even though he knows that those he had once known no longer exist.

External Conflicts: No one takes him seriously :( No, I don’t know. I’ll probably figure this one out as I write him.

Notes: TBD - everything subject to change as I go.

[sativa]

Scene 1

[sativa]

It traveled across the darkness, hurtling at speeds faster than the eye could see along the strands of dark matter that makes up the hidden universe, expanding, rolling, silent as the grave on an every expanding wave of sound that was too hidden to hear.

Until something did hear it.

A relic of a forgotten age chirped, buzzing as old gears shook off the silky fine stardust clinging to its static forcefield as it powered up, recording the message that came in barely coherent bursts and fits, the words a jumbled whine that spoke of signal decay; a result of both distance and time. The relic cataloged the disturbance, parsing out the code into a coherent whole as it translated electric currents into voices, into words that bespoke a dead language.

Message

Received

As the electric storm passed in the blink of an eye, the relic chirped again, attaching a string of numbers to the digital code, waiting for the next messenger relay ship to pass by before info dumping its cache. And then it powered down, hunkering down for the long years between ships, experiencing time differently then those who zipped across the universe at speeds faster than light. It was good at waiting, designed to withstand the cold, empty vagaries of space.

It was not alive after all.

None of them were.

Scene 2 - WIP

[sativa]

Fama leaned on the table, staring down the microscope with a frown flashing across her interface, transmitting her displeasure and frustration as easily as she knew how to anyone who would be looking. Not that anyone would at the moment unless they had hacked into the cameras scattered across the laboratory. That was always a possibility and Fama had learned to take nothing for granted if she could help it.

She just wasn’t designed that way. Assumptions, in her line of work, typically ended in disaster and not just the type of disaster that meant spending six weeks mopping up the mess in her lab because she accidentally liquefied an entire crop of mushrooms instead of accelerating the breakdown of dead matter into nutrient rich soil (which was not helped by the fact that the liquefied mushrooms still somehow managed to sprout in every single crevice and crack of her laboratory if the humidity got above 71%). No, the assumptions that brought disaster could be of a more permanent variety as programs were overwritten and personalities were permanently changed (or had to be reverted to an older version of her previous selves).

Who knew how many years she had lost with each painful lesson forgotten and then repeated with each singular reboot and factory reset. Actually, scratch that, she didn’t want to know anymore. Each time she calculated the time based on the relay stations time stamps she felt—well, old. And she was far older than some on the relay station.

Frowning a little more, Fama activated another program, letting a long, flexible arm to snake it’s way into the air as it exited a compartment on her side before it landed on a notepad next to her on the table and started writing down notes. The new batch of nanomachines were about 0.5 seconds more sluggish than she expected them to be, keeping themselves in a tight cluster on the agar rich plate under her microscope. More peculiar though, was that instead of scattering to seek out the broken tissue, they were clumped in a set, moving together was they walked across the agar. More to the point, only a handful of the machines broke apart from the group to tackle the frayed edge of the scarred tissue cells she had grown on the plate which was counter to the program she had uploaded into them before testing them.

She just couldn’t seem to get it quite right.

Frustrated, Fama shoved a third appendage against the counter, pushing her chair away from the experiment as she finished her notes and rubbed her copper brow in a gesture as old as time itself, or so the old sayings go.

It wasn’t