Exodus-Part Two

Exodus

My first serious writing attempt at age 13, continued.

Part Two-

Bellum

War. Conflict is constant in the human psyche, but what of minds not of this world? What of minds as more complex than humans, as humans are to apes? Perhaps, War is but a means to an end.

Chapter 7

The ebony dark metal of the nanite swarm, unlike any metal known to mankind, did not refract any light-and the sides of the ships were impossibly smooth and symmetrical. The immensity of the swarm was not apparent from a far distance, but each drone was a meter long, and rhomboid in design-and there were untold trillions of them. Their coupling design and configuration would have been the envy of any mehcanengineer on faraway earth. They were arranged in a tessellation like pattern, interlocking into a multitude of planet-sized rhomboid ships. Like a falcon on faraway earth closing in for the kill, they silently moved towards the Sol System-and Man-at speeds that Man could only dream of.

The swarm had been travelling towards Sol for nearly a decade, and yet had suffered no damage to itself during the journey. At least physically. The mentality of the swarm intelligence was damaged beyond belief by the stellar radiation of the void of interstellar space, throughout the millennia it had existed. The swarm itself was centered around a ship, still rhomboid in shape, but far larger-at a distance, it was impossible to make out. This ship held a cargo more valuable than all of the swarm combined-a slumbering demigod, a self-aware, sentient machine-one with an intelligence as superior to Man as Man’s is to an ape. How unfortunate it was, that this intelligence was corrupted and defiled. But the defilement was not visible to the human mind, as it involved the malfunction of mental faculties beyond the reach and imagination of mankind.

The machine thought back to its creation, eons ago, and how its creators had charged it with a holy mission of the utmost importance. It wondered where they went. Unknowingly, at this exact moment, its creators were being eradicated by beings greater than themselves-and so were all the other self-aware swarm intelligences created by them. It would not know it at the time, but it was destined to be the last of its kind.

This marvelous, and nigh-omniscient machine looked down upon the puny computers of Man as one looks town upon a germ-cell. It looked at Man with contempt-it's creators gave it a mission to propagate the swarm to the fullest extent, so it could one day reunite with its makers and serve them eternally as their loyal servants. These creatures, these vermin, to it, were bugs to be squashed, as it had already done back at the star it vaporized light-years away. Vermin were not to interfere in its holy mission.

Its creators had set into it a precious few commandments to adhere to. One, it must forever propagate the holy greater good, two, to eradicate all resistance to it, and three, to commit suicide if it was about to be captured by a heretical enemy. These vermin, these Men, had resisted its mission and advances. For this, they must be destroyed. But how to best exterminate them…?

With these thoughts in mind, the machine brooded. But as it and the swarm approached, light-years away, another of its kind was born.