DOWN TO BASICS

[Maharg67]

I APOLOGIZE BUT I AM GOING TO RESTART THIS STORY IN A NEW TOPIC BECAUSE IT HAS FAILED THIS TIME TO BE 'DOWN TO BASICS' AND HAS BECOME TOO COMPLICATED, TOO QUICKLY, WHICH IS A WEAKNESS OF MINE AS A WRITER.

 

IF YOU WANT ME TO CHANGE MY MIND, THEN PLEASE GIVE ME SOME FEEDBACK.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-01(0001)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

Was it a dream? It it was it was incredibly vivid, realistic and real seeming. I decided quickly to treat it like it was reality which turned out to be a wise choice.

 

After waking on the strange metallic stone disk-platform, it was about nine metres across with a gently sloping outward rim, I checked myself over and was surprised. The injuries were gone, the damaged gear was all in brand new condition and what had been half empty containers were now newish. It made no real logical sense but then again, none of it did.

 

It was a big cavern chamber with sunlight coming through a big hole in the ceiling high above. I glimpsed white cloud up there through that hole but that is all.

 

I drank water from a rocky stream flowing out of a hole in the wall. It was fresh and clear. I ate some yellowish berries from a bush growing fairly close to the platform. They were a little on the bitter side but tasty enough.

 

In my cargo-trousers, Tshirt, web-belt, boots, cap and other gear, along with my large ergonomic hiking backpack, I looked like a typical teenage hiker out to enjoy the woods.

 

What resources did I have? There was the pocket-knife with its two big blades, one bigger than the other. There was the pocket-tool with its thirteen devices. There was my shock proof, water proof survival wristwatch with compass. I had a survival knife in a sheaf, a small general purpose knife in a sheaf, a .22LR calibre survival foldagun, five full magazines for the foldagun, some boxed ammo for the foldagun, an outdoors digital camera, two other shirts other than the Tshirt I was wearing, another pair of cargo trousers other than the pair I was wearing, two spare pairs of socks other than the pair I was wearing, a golden ring on the middle finger of each hand, a survival torch, a foldafisher kit, a survival lamp, spare rechargeable batteries, a limited compact satellite-telephone, a compact xolaser-pistol, a flarepistol that could also fire special shells, a sleeping fold-over not to be confused with a sleeping-bag and a few other items.

 

I took out a survival foodbar and began to unwrap it. The flavour of such things were not great but they were highly nutritional. The voice spoke deep in my mind.

 

-=You can transduplicate the foodbar. (Audio visual impressions showing how it could be done.)

 

I was impressed both by the voice deep in my mind and the way I could make the one foodbar become more than one. Yet I could do so with more than the foodbar. So I returned to the metallic stone disk-platform and placed the backpack full of stuff and other stuff on it. I went to a raised cylinder with some kind of controls showing and did as was instructed by the 'voice'. There was a sparkling shimmer and now I had the original stuff plus, a distance away, were two copies of everything.

 

The thin but strong survival dome, and ground sheet, went into a small cave along with my gear. The backpacks were leaned against a rock wall. Two sleeping fold-overs made a nice comfortable bed. A survival lamp lit up the cave chamber nicely. I ate two foodbars, some berries, drank a self-heating cupcan of coffee like coffu and then went to sleep.

 

Of course I had a nightmare but that was to be expected.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-02(0002)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

I awoke with a start, 'sensing' an intruder but somehow not 'sensing' danger. Something snuffled unhappily, something unlike anything I had ever heard before in my life. I smelt stale blood, wet fur and snot. Then I did something that took me by surprise; I reached out with my mind and gently, warmly, called the small one in.

 

The furry wozzle infant was sitting snuffling softly in self pity as I fussed over him, finishing with his small wounds, cleaning the dirt from his fine fur and wiping his nose. I got him to blow his nose into a biodegradable handkerchief and then put it aside for later cleaning. The wozzle sniffed at me in puzzlement a couple of times and then took another bite of the foodbar I had given him. He was cute, adorable and dangerous with strong, solid muscles beneath that fur.

 

-=This is a wozzle of the wozfolk. This is a male, a wozzle-da, an infant between a baby and a sub-adult. He will only have, as yet, a child name. Notice the thin leather collar around his neck. That shows he is of the Clansfolk of the Waycloria that have many kinds of people amongst them. They will be sending search-rescue parties.

 

The small one had accepted me totally and that felt good. I was not used to being accepted like this except by a few like myself and those of my special group. Which reminded me that they were supposed to be coming through from the Lost Earth at any time in the same way that I had done.

 

Yes, the Lost Earth!

 

Taking out a laptop computer, I opened up its lid to show the 3Dscreen and the keyboard-keypad controls. Then I showed the astonished wozzle a kid's cartoon about wombles. The wozzle infant was soon being quietly entertained and insisted on watching the same short show many times, which seemed somehow quite normal.

 

I wondered what the infant had gone through, where it had come from and how it had become hurt. For now I would focus just on making him comfortable and well cared for. Yet even then I was starting to 'sense' that trouble would come as linked to the small one and his plight.

 

WozuGoo was his name. The 'voice' started to teach me the common wozzle language as well as the common language of the Clansfolk of the Waycloria. The voice gave me some basic general knowledge of wozzles and the Clansfolk along with the Waycloria. It did not give me more because it did not have more to give and it did not tell me how it knew what it did because it did not know this either.

 

WozuGoo slept soundly for a while, curled up against me and wrapped in a sleeping fold-over. When he had a nightmare I rubbed his side until he settled down again.

 

I began to reorganize the encampment, putting away possibly dangerous items. According to the 'voice' the wozzle infant knew about knives and such but not about guns and such. I locked up the backpacks. I found a copy of a small furry teddy-bear and made some small changes before giving it to the very pleased WozuGoo.

 

The wozzle infant began to teach me more about the environment, about what could be eaten safely and what was dangerous. It drew basic word-symbols using a pencil on a pad of paper, which he thought was just wonderful. He soon adapted well to using the pencil with his pawhand. I began to teach the wozzle infant some basic skills and knowledge.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-03(0003)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

I observed the savage looking human like creatures moving along the other side of the cavern chamber. The well spread greenery, the sunshine coming down through the hole in the ceiling, both helped to hide our small cave home behind bushes and in shadow.

 

I 'sensed' menace in these creatures. They were covered with boneskin, smooth and hard, and each had a thing on his or her forearms that was a spinedarter able to shoot deadly spinedart. Or so the 'voice' was teaching me. There were five of them, two being female with boneskinned breasts being bare. All wore a kind of lion skin thing and belts dotted with pouches and other items.

 

-=They are oomans warriors of the ShanogaTao that is one of the most dangerous and xenophobic of all of the ooman tribes, which is saying a good deal since all oomans are xenophobic.

 

Apart from the spinedarters, the oomans had retractable claws and steel or iron bladed weapons of exotic design. Two held powerful looking crossbows, two had clusters of spears and the fifth had a flintlock musket-rifle. The technologies seemed to be an odd mixture. All was well cared for.

 

I got the impression that the smaller females were faster and more agile than the bigger, slower, stronger males. Despite their fairly primitive technologies, they were going to be problematic. It was a good thing that I was an enhanced, augmented supersoldier with some special abilities.

 

-=I compute that they are tracking somebody, something, and that could mean the wozzle infant.

 

They were not going to have him. The infant snuck up beside me, he had already learned the need for stealth, and I let him have a use of the binoculars. The compact, advanced optical device impressed him greatly but the appearance of the oomans scared him, which I considered was very sensible of him.

 

The ShanogaTao oomans began to move towards our cave. I asked the infant to hide and he shot away for clearly wozzle infants were trained to do this from youth. He hid inside the tent and long, sharp retractable claws slid out from his wrists. They were very impressive looking and just as deadly.

 

From a special secret cavity in a backpack I took a slim black case and opened it. I put the hitech black sniper-rifle together quickly and efficiently. Killing was not something I ever enjoyed, not even when it came to shooting rabbits for purposes of survival. I could not understand why people would hunt animals for pleasure.

 

I aimed and carefully targeted the oomans. The trick was to shoot the last target first so that the ones closer to the shooter would have to turn and run the furthest to cover. I aimed carefully and shot the first ooman dead. Going into slowmo caused everything around me to slow in motion and myself to speed up.

 

The trick was a neat one but took valuable psionic energies as did other such tricks that I had. All FEAR Operatives had such, FEAR meaning First Encounter Assault Recon, because all FEAR Operatives, or Troopers, were transformed gen-engineered supersoldiers.

 

Five times I fired and each shot impacted into a boneskin forehead, killing each target in turn. The targets had been certain hits otherwise I would have gone for the torsos. It helped that their was no real air movement, no high humidity and other such conditions that can throw off a bullet.

 

Getting rid of the bodies was harder. I buried them carefully after looting many of their possessions. When I found the sack with fresh cooked wozzle meat in it, I speedily got rid of it before the wozzle infant could be upset by it. Everything useful, in some way even if it was for knowledge, I transduplicated and an incredible sixteen copies of each item. I was astonished by this happening and even the 'voice' was surprised.

 

I accidentally transduplicated a piece of wozzle fur, upsetting the WozuGoo, and we ceremoniously burned all seven pieces of fur before burying the ash carefully.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-04(0004)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

I dreamed an incredibly vivid dream of myself and the Lost Earth.

 

I ran along the footpath with the others even as a shaking went through the footpath, the whole cityscape. Other gen-engineered children were running with me along with teachers, guards, carers and others. We had gone through the transformation process recently and were still sore from it but we were tough, very tough, and it was the adults who were having troubles. This was despite that they all wore lightly armoured exosuits that enhanced and augmented strength, endurance and other physical abilities.

 

A missile shot through the air overhead and struck the distant, hulking monster of vast weirdness and horror. It had smashed into a skyscraper, causing it to tumble over into another skyscraper. The missile struck the megabeast and blasted a small wound in it. The creature screamed out in rage and agony, tentacles writhing through the air.

 

In exosuits, some Australian SAS (Special Air Service) elite soldiers ran past holding missile quadlaunchers to fight the bigger creatures and upgraded assault-rifles to take on the smaller monsters, the larvae falling from the megabeasts.

 

Cloverfield had been the military security designation for the first incident that had ended in the destruction of New York. Since then megabeasts had shown up in Japan, Canada, South Africa, Central America and there in Australia. They seemed to come out of nowhere, through some kind of rift between dimensions, and these rifts were always below water and in areas of sea close to land.

 

Human technologies to deal with the alien threat had greatly improved. Megabeasts had been destroyed with out the use of nuclear weapons but larvae infestations were a problem and new types of threat had arisen. Larvae became second stage superbeasts, though most failed to do so. These hulking beasties were much smaller than the megabeasts but they were bad enough. Supersoldiers were meant to go in and wipe out successful larvae infestations and nests of superbeasts.

 

An armoured Land Armored Vehicle, eight wheeled and amphibious, opened up its hatch and the children raced up into it in a very disciplined manner, being joined by adults. Others went into other upgraded, augmented LAVs with turrets firing of 40mm twinguns or 20mm quadguns or single 75mm autocannons. More SAS soldiers were around, along with other Australian soldiers in squat hulking armoured mecha, each stomping along while firing autocannons and quadlaunchers.

 

The irony was that the alien invaders had brought rich new resources with them. Their genetic secrets, their flesh, their blood and other materials had all turned out to be very valuable to humanity. A dead megabeast could provide carefully processed food rations for many people and did so. Ironically, larvae venom killed other larvae and, in concentrated doses, brought down superbeasts and could even weaken megabeasts. Already new biotechnologies were arising from these strange new resources including the painful transformation process that we children had been sent through.

 

A super buzzbomb, that looked generally like a German buzzbomb of World War Two, came rushing through the sky and exploded into the megabeast so that it shuddered and began to collapse downwards, bringing another building with it. Dust and debris exploded into the air. Somebody screamed but the noise abruptly ceased.

 

The LAVs began to move quickly to escape the area, to get away from what had been the busy bustling city of Perth of the Commonwealth of Australia. Most of the civilians were gone now into cramped underground bunker complexes except for soldiers, for salvagers, for convicts and others needed there but also the unwanted. Yes, the unwanted, those who were deemed not important enough to save, who were not to be pitied and cared for, who were left to die except for basic support.

 

The big wheeled LAVs entered a flooded area and were soon moving along, boat fashion, further towards supposed safety.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-05(0005)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

We climbed up the wall of the cavern, that is I climbed and the wozzle infant sat in a pouch at my back giving me helpful hints until he fell asleep with his head laid on its side against my back. I found an natural alcove pocket in the rock and carefully examined the cavern from there. There were more entrances than I had perceived before. One was a tunnel entrance, a big one, high up on the wall opposite and it ended in a big quasinatural ledge. Yes, quasinatural for I was realizing that the cavern was natural but also artificially influenced as well.

 

WozuGoo woke up and studied the cavern in wonder. He got a peek through the binoculars, adjusted heavily to suit him, and was even more impressed. We were still up there when the young, seminaked woman and young adult wozzle both with webbing of pouch dotted belts, came running into the chamber. The woman had a short skirt lion-cloth type garb also. WozuGoo surprised me by cringing at the sight of the wozzle because I had assumed that he would appreciate such a sight.

 

-=There is something unusual about WozuGoo. I was not going to say anything until I knew more. I do not think that he is dangerous.

 

No, WozuGoo was not dangerous. I hugged him to reassure him and he cuddled up to me. I 'sensed' no danger in the fast running, smooth moving pair who were both armed with guns being a bolt-action carbine for the wozzle and a bigger bolt-action rifle for the taller human. They also had knives, tools and other items including some exotic ones that I did not recognize.

 

Suddenly WozuGoo got happily excited and wanted to use the binoculars. I adjusted them to his setting and he examined the older wozzle. Then he was making wozfolk happy noises.

 

We met the others in a small clearing on the other side of a big rocky pool, like a bowl of rock, and there the curious orange-brown skinned woman looked upon me with some surprise. I looked upon her in the same way for she was not actually human, at least not human others were of my home world for I was a human-alien hybrid.

 

The older, female wozzle picked up WozuGoo and cuddled him, licking his face, before they chatted in fast spoken wozfolk common tongue. I realized then that WozuGoo had been speaking it slowly for my benefit.

 

The older wozzle turned to look at me with a soft frown and then spoke a common language to the area. “WozuGoo thinks you have adopted him as his father. I hope you have not been misleading him.”

 

“To be WozuGoo's father would be an honour.” I spoke this even as I realized, with a surprise, that it was very true. “Though I wonder that his biological father might not like this.”

 

The wozzle adult-female spoke again with less concern in her voice. “WozuGoo was fathered by a cookoonu, a creature that impregnates humanoid adult females of other species and then moves on. WozuGoo is a wozzle-cookoonu hybrid. I am his older sister, though some would call me half-sister, and I have brought him up as his mother. WozuGoo says you have transduplicated many goods taken from the damned ShanogaTao oomans and that you have strange devices of much trickery.”

 

I smiled and then nodded. “That is one way to put it, as good as any. Please come with me to our encampment. Perhaps you can tell me how poor WozuGoo ended up out in the wilderness by himself. Our home is your home, of course, which goes also for your companion.”

 

The wozzle female responded. “Thank you but you just gave us all of your possessions.”

 

I shrugged, a little. “I do this because of WozuGoo, because I could not make him unhappy by excluding his sister-mother.”

 

At that she seemed surprised and she gave the wozzle infant, now sleeping happily in her arms, a cheek licking.

 

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-06(0006)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

The newcomers were puzzled and impressed by my equipment except for that which was much like their own in design and make. Our knives were surprisingly similar as were our pouches. They were impressed by my foldagun and compact crossbow like autobow. I had put away the sniper rifle and had no intention as yet of showing them that or other hitech specialist weapons that I had. The compact xolaser-pistols were a survival grade device designed to deal with special threats. That is of a kind that had begun to come through the transdimensional rifts other than the ones that the megabeasts were coming through. The laptop computers were most amazing to them.

 

Yet they had quasimagical devices that impressed me. There was a very thick disk shaped mirror, with a bowl shaped back, that they called a sharing-mirror, that could do various tricks such as communicating with other devices of the kind or of similar kind, along with detecting certain kinds of undefined threats. The wozzle adult-female had a healing-crystal and the woman had a thing called an elemental 'light-burner'. There were also other items. The guns were of interest to me being very like those of the very late Nineteenth Century of my home world. Indeed they looked so familiar that I began to wonder.

 

They considered the foodbars to be not very tasty but appreciated the compactness of them and the way they lasted so long in a healthy condition along with their high nutritional content. They kind of liked the coffu.

 

They sat with me in the small cave home as the wozzle infant sat on my lap and examined the stack of loot, and transduplicated loot, I had taken from the dead ShanogaTao warriors. There was tension in them but they did not seem to fear me. No, I 'sensed' hope in them.

 

The auman woman spoke. "Our people are seeking a new home due to political and other complications in our old homelands."

 

I nodded. "Are the two of you are hybrids like wonderful WozuGoo?"

 

After a pause, the woman spoke, she being named ScarlaTibala of the Scarla Tribe. "We are hybrids, yes, but while I am also cookoonu fathered, WoziTiaLa is phantoozi mothered. Puristas have struck into our old homelands demanding a cleansing away of all hybrids. They are Clansfolk exiles driven out of the Clanslands of the Clansdom by the Clansroyal military forces serving the cause of the Clansqueen herself. The Clansking is captured, arrested and waiting for execution for high treason in the Twin High Tower. The Puristas are unable to return to the Clansdom but for now the Clansroyal Forces are unable to give aid against the Puristas. We come from ClansTribal peoples on the edge of the Clansdom and though we are fighting hard against the Puristas, they had better weapons and armour than we do. They are fanatical killers driven by a very bizarre and shadowy cause that is deluded into seeing itself as a very noble and pure cause. They have been offering the savage oomans generous bounties on capturing or killing any so called impure escapees; the bounties are bigger for capture than for killing because the Puristas burn their victims to death though they do drug them so they feel no pain."

 

I scowled. "My own world has had similar fanatics and similar forms of murder driven by false causes of 'purity'. You can have all of the ooman loot but for now I wish to keep all my own stuff, both original and transduplicated."

 

ScarlaTibala responded. "Sounds more than fair and satisfies your earlier offer of an open home, as far as I am concerned."

 

"I feel the same." WoziTiaLa then spoke in turn. "All of it will become useful. We will trade goods and services with you otherwise to use other resources you may have."

 

I shrugged. "If the need presents itself, there is much of mine that you can use. Your people are welcome but my own people are also to come here. We will need to make some sort of agreement. When are your people coming?"

 

WoziTiaLa shook her head in the short sharp manner of wozfolk. "We can only guess that it will be in the next couple of days. We are having troubles with our sharing-mirror for it is a weak duplication. Your transduplications are strong, very stable. You must be very gifted."

 

There were things they were not saying, that they did not want to say, but then again the same went for myself. We were still getting to know each other, to fully trust each other.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

01-07(0007)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

We expanded the encampment by using another small cave very close to the first one, along with the first one. We sorted out the gear and did some hunting and gathering for food and other resources. We fished the waters in that great cavern chamber. We adults took turns at being on sentry duty or even scouting the cavern area at times. Yet nothing came, not my people or any of those from that strange underworld, for it was a vast underworld of great underlands, each being a great suncrystal lit and warmed cavern. I was able to transduplicate some crafted items, being originals for trying to transduplicate duplicates was dangerous. This gave us more resources.

 

I was learning that transduplicating drained me of valuable energies of mind, body and spirit. So it was no magical solution to meeting needs and wants. I slept and meditated, drank a nasty tasting but revitalizing serum given to me by the wozzle, and rationed any 'special trickery' that I did. It turned out that the ancient disk-platform could be used in various exotic ways by those with the right abilities but the use of them was often tricky.

 

WozuGoo was chuffed that he had three adults fussing over him. Apart from playing, learning, doing some simple chores, he was bathed at times and spent much time sleeping. He would take turns sleeping with me or his wozzle sister and, less so, with the auman woman.

 

We made some special preparations for trouble such as hidden caches, two being in hideaways, and some hidden look out points, two being in treetops. We trained WozuGoo to hide better by playing variations of hide and seek games.

 

I used a laptop computer to make a map though it had only a limited built in printer that produced some small map print-outs.

 

I gave in and showed the other adults my special weapons and other devices but was reluctant to admit that I had been an operative and, unwillingly, an assassin. The world had fractured, in more than one ways, after the transdimensional rifts increased in number and yet more threats came through. It was lucky that allies, of different qualities, also came through rifts. Our enemy's enemies were not always our friends but at least we had non aggression treaties with them. Another factor on our side had been enemies fighting each other, sometimes focusing on each other instead of us. Still, our world was lost as the rifts grew and began to transform everything around us.

 

They probably guessed what I had been but neither auman woman or wozzle adult female seemed inclined to judge me. I soon found out that neither had a particularly shining past and yet they were generally good people.

 

I transduplicated their guns and other gear so that soon we had a nice, if small arsenal. Yet it was not weapons but knowledge that would be of greatest assistance to us. We needed to know more about what was going on out there in that amazing realm.

[Maharg67]

01-08(0008)

DOWN TO BASICS: BOBBY

FUN WITH THE SHANOGATAO

 

I examined a copy of a lever-action rifle that the auman woman had carried and realized that its calibre was that of the British of the late 19th and Early 20th Centuries. It was .303 in British Imperial or 7.7mm in metric measurements. The weapon was a fine made one and the calibre was powerful. I had used lever-action guns back on my home world when I had been forced to do so. They did the trick well enough against rogue humans and some rift alien threats. I asked about the calibre and got a surprise response.

 

We were in one of the cave alcoves, not the original one, now set up as a meeting-eating-crafting place. It was night and a small crafted lamp burned with stuff taken from thornpods, of a thornbush, and given basic processing. The thornplants were quite valuable but tough to use, especially as they were hard and covered with big sharp thorns.

 

The auman woman spoke. "They are humans, like you, and they call themselves the Brotish Imperials. They are militaristic, strange in their ways and not much liked but they are not down right evil as some peoples are in the wondrous Underworld. They sometimes sell pistols, carbines, rifles and even basic cannons to some peoples. They do the same with phonographs, telephone networks, telegram networks and such like. They do not sell such as machineguns or wireless radios but the Clansfolk gained the secrets and now manufacture their own, often better, versions of them. There was tension between the Brotish Imperium and the Clansfolk because of this but then the Nameless Ones mediated and the Clansfolk gained more Brotish secrets but paid a hefty compensation of many resources. Both the Brotish and the Clansfolk, along with other peoples, gained some special gifts from the Nameless Ones."

 

ScarlaTibala went on speaking. "The Clansfolk are far more forth coming with technologies, especially to their allies, than the Brotish Imperials are. The Clansqueen had many good technological resources sent to us that helped us deal with the Purists and other threats; they were not just weapons and such like. We had a good working network of telegraph lines, telephone lines and some wireless radios along with our quasimagical items. Hopefully my peoples will be able to salvage most of it, at least, before they come here. There are many of my peoples."

 

I nodded. "You have a few million amongst your people, then."

 

The auman woman looked surprised, in her auman fashion. "Many as in over five hundred thousand. Is that not considered many on your world?"

 

I shook my head. "No, even my small city had over a million. We had, at least, over ten billion people on my world but it is suspected that, in the Rift Wars and other troubles, over two billion have perished. There are great wars raging on my world between millions of fighters. Great monsters stomp across the world. Demonic things swarm through the air. I do not know what is going on except that soon my people will start coming here being over twenty million of them. There is a good chance many others will come also in the millions, many not being human but arrivals through the rifts."

 

The auman woman stared at me in deep shock. Clearly she had no words to say.

 

Then the wozzle adult-female came in, holding a sleepy infant, and was puzzled by the expression on the face of ScarlaTibala. When I explained the situation, she also looked shocked. Perhaps it was for very good reason. Being used to dealing with populations of millions I had not realized that what these people thought of as 'large numbers' of people might be quite different than my own perceptions. I was soon starting to learn my error and I wondered if I had done wisely in telling them.

 

A few hours after that, eighty-three people came through being mostly humans but with some others amongst them. They brought what equipment and supplies that they could. Like them, the gear they brought was all rejuvenated. With the eighty-three came trouble in the form of what was soon being called the Gang of Five.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

00-01(0009)

DOWN TO BASICS: ONE OF THE ONE

THE GREATER EPIC

 

I was beyond the capacity of primitive human technologies to detect as I slipped through a rift, that should not have existed, and noted a planet going through incredible turmoil. Arks were already there, gathering up as many survivors as was possible. Not just humans but those that had come through the rifts including the great monsters that had first attacked the Earth. Except they were not really 'monsters' at all but struggling to survive. The highly brilliant and cunning but unwise Empire of Empires had sent the creatures through a rift-gate but something had gone wrong and the creatures had ended up in the wrong Reality Alternate and on the wrong Alternate Earth. Typical! They would be punished, of course, but for now there were problems to solve.

 

Many have already fled through primitive rift-gates or using other means. You need to find the hidden primaries.

 

The hidden primaries were natural reaction creations to the great rift disturbances. The nature of them was very exotic, very hard to understand. I was the One of the One but even I had a hard time fully understanding such amazing phenomena of the Multiverse, the universality of universes. The hidden primaries had appeared 'before' the rift crisis began but they were still the 'result' of the rift crisis because the rift crisis caused disrupting time ripples to take place. That seemed to be a useful basic explanation and yet I knew it was not really the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

I was less than nothingness, again something hard to understand, and yet I existed.

 

I noted the big troubled starship full of doomed humans and other entities including the oomoo who had created the quasiliving vessel, who had come in it through a rift. So I carefully reached out, even more carefully altered localized time-space reality and fixed up the starship, made it possible for them to more than just survive, enhancing and augmenting the starship, adding much to other resources. I even added three smaller starships fixed to the hull as its daughter ships and to each of them three even smaller starships as the grand-daughter ships.

 

Soon after, with memories and histories adjusted as much as possible, the starship set and began to accelerate towards Mars where it would set up an outpost colony. It was there, on the Red Planet, that a series of projects would start the Terraforming of Mars but also better prepare for the first hyperspace starship mission. Soon also would begin attempts to send rescue ships to the Earth.

 

I was pleased that there would be at least some strong survival with the five million plus souls surviving in the great starship, most of them being in suspended animation.