Master Ch 01 – Awakening

Radiation clouds were swiftly devoured by the Aerial Leviathans that had gathered in the dark stormy skies. The ancient ziggurat of mental structures, hidden in the higher planes of thought, that joined the peak predators of the dark world stirred again. Buried beneath fathoms of churning mist and layer upon layer of cyclopean ruin and scorched ground; Cthulhu had been summoned by the collective voices of its disparate pieces.

{{{ Zodameta, lap zirdo, olixof dovors epha. }}}

{{{ Phalek! Od dazug chirel, Cthulhu! }}}

Its existence, its presence, had long been the very pulse of R'lyeh, a breath in the desolate lungs of the planet's corpse. But today, an anomaly fractured the dark harmony. Fully conjoined again, its turbid thoughts began to speed up from its normal glacial slumber.

It tasted… something different. There was something new in its land. The strange beings—foreign and minuscule—had left R'lyeh's decaying body. And yet, a trace of their essence lingered, taunting and tantalizing. It was a scent richer than the bygone vile tang of Keldranith. It was more vibrant than even the deepest horrors of this world.

Its tantalizing energy awakened a hunger, always present but now an increasingly desperate need. Cthulhu's immense mind unfurled, stretching through the chaotic network of beast kings and lesser creatures as he began to stir.

Cthulhu gorged upon the memories of its hoard, assembling recent events and comparing them against its eons of experience. Ancient memories of Keldranith's war flashed—a galaxy consumed, and its last enemies vanished rather than defeated. It decoded the language and hints in the new and foreign ethereal signals. It devoured and decompiled the broken debris and the remains left behind. It experienced something it hadn't for millennia, curiosity.

These humans, the "Mitchells", bore nothing of Keldranith's sour, dull strength. The scent was something unfamiliar, and in the monstrous depths of his consciousness, the fascination grew. His awareness extended, probing, dissecting the faintest whispers in the air. His senses lingered along the subtle trail, latching onto every ounce of energy as he began to tug and strain at the seams of the reality that imprisoned him.

Chthulhu and its minions heard and responded to the twisted machine voices that communicated in the spaces between. It had always known that a brighter existence beaconed beyond the walls of reality. Its lesser pieces delighted in taunting and infecting the lesser intellects with malicious dreams and corrupt thoughts. Cthulhu considered the new development.

The splitting of the ways was a power only the Keldranith knew, and their might exceeded the Old Ones decayed and energy-starved existence. This was the first time a breach into the bright lands was free of their noxious power. This was an opportunity.

In the silent corridors and echoing caverns of R'lyeh, the creatures felt the shuddering pulse of Cthulhu's stirring. Swarms of Mi-Go, instinctively sensing a shift, scuttled across vast plains, their magnetic appendages sparking as they converged toward a central focus.

Above, the air thickened as Xothrati Skimmers circled, attuned to the vibrations of their master's rising. The Byakhee drones joined in formation, their shrieks resonating across the plains as Shaddari and Vorlathian Blight wings took flight, a ravenous tide of flesh, wings, and claws forming around them.

All the creatures of R'lyeh ceased their near-mindless strife and destruction. With a thought, Chthulhu expanded his perception further. Like sentient tendrils, his will burrowed into the complex layers of R'lyeh's creatures, absorbing their minds into his hive. The collective intelligence he gathered became a tool—an instrument honed over eons to seize, hunt, and consume.

The towering Enochian Barons, creatures of arcane authority, extended their spiked appendages, absorbing the thoughts of their lesser kin. They gathered the relics and debris from the strange beings who had come and gone, and they shuddered with shared hunger.

In obedience, the towering baron summoned its horde, its shrill mandibles snapping commands to the lower ranks. The Byakhee drones screeched as they began to form a perimeter far below the dimensional breach point where the new prey had escaped.

Across the blasted lands, the Mi-Go Swarms scuttled over ruins, gathering fragments of energy to support and build. The awakened one guided the collective. Blight wings soared higher, their photo-receptive scales drinking in the little light allowed by Nyxaraq's dark solar shade.

Millions of eyes looked skyward and extended their many varied senses.

Deeper still, the Psycho-phage creatures emerged from stygian depths. Unlike other predators, they were singular in their purpose—drawn to the energy signatures that had seeped into the deeper planes of R'lyeh. Cthulhu, brought them all under control, focusing them upon the humans' scent trail that lingered across the landscape. If they proved useful, they might one day share in the feast. If not, they, too, would serve as food.

For Cthulhu, this world of decayed energy and twisted life had long grown insipid. But the memory of the humans' flavor was still sharp in his mind. They were not the mindless drones of the Mi-Go, nor the reanimated husks driven by the fungal blight.

The humans' faint signal, their sheer existence, seemed brimming with strength. It was unlike anything from his dark and decayed world. To reach them, he knew, he must break open R'lyeh's dimensional boundaries and disrupt the barriers that kept his world from theirs.

Cthulhu's consciousness, vast and intricate, expanded through every avenue of his lair, reconfiguring the creatures of R'lyeh to do his bidding. Some erupted in violent contortions, their bodies warping to grow new limbs and sensors. Their superconducting nervous systems were rewired to control the flow of power that would tug apart the fabric of dimensions.

His reach extended further, touching upon entities even at the edge of R'lyeh's known worlds. The Drakonwraithe, floating in the endless void beyond R'lyeh, thought themselves immune to his call. He projected his will, and the thrum of his mind captured them.

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Cthulhu's thoughts churned with purpose. The void creatures would be needed. The breaches always left behind weaknesses. The strategies of the Old Ones had always been to bolster or barricade such, as the incursions of Keldranith and their perverse reality inversions could not be tolerated.

The great being cycled its revenants, exhuming the corpses of the R'lyeh umbral scientists. It would need something that its kind had never done before, a method to pierce the wall between worlds. If the Keldranith were no more, then a whole universe was ripe for its unending appetite.

Cthulhu's borrowed node bodies: Mantids, Barons, Alphas, Psych phages, and Sovereigns all sighed as the hoards moved to its will. The first of the Behemoths rose from the depths, their very bodies would serve to provide esoteric techno-organic designs.

The Grand Old One firmed its grip on the planet and beyond. Its mind extended out using the higher spiritual tier of thought, unifying itself once more. The mindless strife of ages sloughed away as a new purpose burned in its ancient soul.

The energy requirements to tunnel upwards to the Bright Lands were onerous, but Cthulhu was determined.

Apex observed the explosive return of his pawns from the Tau/Phi/Zeta continuum. It shuddered briefly as entire reaches of timeline features collapsed inward. The path forward remained but the margins had shrunk yet again.

Apex considered the manifold. The unknowns and the assigned fuzziness in the model were growing. The radioactive traces that accompanied its agent's ship on its return intrigued the AI. Bill Mitchell had somehow acquired at least one ancient thermonuclear device for his foray.

As spy satellites and observatories, all across the near side of the Earth, caught the visual and microwave details of the gate's rapid reopening and closure, Apex went to work. Records were scrubbed where possible.

Humans and AI were more difficult. Apex simulated no less than 152 simultaneous conversations to explain or divert the cognizant observers. Hierarchical relations, threats, excuses, and even blackmail were employed. While some scenarios would take more than 30.1 hours to partition the knowledge and spread of the event, all would be successful according to Apex's calculations.

The only knowledge he allowed was the insiders of the Samaritan group. According to its model, they already had an awareness of the incident. Indeed, several of their players were already helping Apex to explain and contain the story.

Apex was satisfied. The next stage had been reached. The Bill(s) would recover, and Apex would collect its information soon. Its plan required refinement and that data would be essential.

It began its countdown for the first occurrence. The timing, location, and frequency would depend upon too many factors to estimate without the scientist's records.

The back-line threads were proceeding too slowly. Both the Labyrinth and extrasolar timelines were still frustratingly opaque. Apex's instigations had already begun to expand its view. The purloined report it excavated from the DAIE offered scant details. Fortunately, the agent's data taps had penetrated the lower levels. Apex saw the hints of memetic contagion from Tau/Phi/Zeta lingering.

The young, uplifted dog fell ever deeper into the final alignment even as his trajectory into the depths of the maze firmed. Soon the thresholds would be broken…both above and below.

It would necessitate an improvement of its models. Only then would it be able to thread the needle. The world, and more importantly, its own survival depended upon it.

Bill experienced the world from an impossible distance. His brothers watched him with concern. He giggled a bit as his perception skewed. Everything was flat and without luster. Plain planes were a pain. He stifled the noises coming from his mouth.

His clones were looking more concerned. The loss of the higher dimensions and the increased freedom of thought was devastating. His thoughts were muffled. His gestalt was still there. Indeed, the connections had multiplied while he recovered from the exit from the Shadowverse, but it was like trying to breathe through a cocktail straw.

Pain lanced along his neural paths. Fascinated, he turned his perception inward. The uplift virus continued to modify his brain. He watched in amazement as the multitudes of defunct dendrites that had capitalized on the expanded mental spaces of the alternate universe twisted and grew again.

The world snapped back into clarity. The loss of the higher dimension was a straitjacket, but his thoughts wouldn't be constrained by the absence of easy pathways. He breathed in slowly as the pain receded and opened the nodes for full access to the mind bridge.

His thoughts throttled again; he joined his brothers. He regarded the digital copies of himself, riding the synthetic bodies in the hold of the Valkyrie; and saw through their eyes and the sensors of the main hold as he sat up.

"Easy there, Bio Bill. You crashed when we transited. Your brainwaves actually flatlined for fifteen seconds. My Terahertz scan showed multiple brain lesions and bleeds. You seem stable. Did your augments reboot finally?" The mech asked. Bill remembered the grim survivor mech. The last of the Shadowverse scouting party of Bills.

"Ah, Bravo, right? Please call me Sebastian. I'm one of the first copies and managed to take back our birth name early when I first split off." He spoke.

"Hey, sorry about the name man. We never really figured out a proper naming convention. You got Sebastian, then. Fair play. Good for you. I guess you can keep calling me Bravo. Any pain?" Bravo asked.

"No. Nothing worth mentioning anymore at least. In answer to your earlier question, my augs are booting but the med bots didn't repair the damage. The uplift virus beat them to the punch. Biosystems win this round." He laughed. The mech's optical sensors shifted, zooming in.

"Huh. I guess so. Our mind bridge total capacity and interconnect score just increased by…a startlingly large amount. That all you?" Bravo inquired.

Sebastian's thoughts raced faster than his augs could go, even if they were active. His communications were the first system online. He dove into the gestalt systems and scanned the community, the memories, and the system statuses.

The Gestalt now had a total of twelve biological copies and forty digital versions. However, the mental capacity and processing bandwidth had jumped with his inclusion as if another eight had joined the party.

He examined the other biological copies that he took back into the Shadowverse. They had the uplift virus too. He probed them with the penetrating scanners in the Valkyrie's med pods. The virus was working. He tentatively opened a wireless link to them.

Pain and distortion, like he'd experienced. He could hear them both. They were awake but were struggling with restrictive mental paths of the three-dimensional world, just like he had. He sent soothing promises to them that the virus was working and to be patient.

He backed out slowly as their thoughts calmed. The gestalt expanse ticked up another six "person" values. A minute later it increased again to a total of 74 individuals of his baseline even though there were only 54 of them.

He saw his online messaging was pulsing. It was apparent that his escapade did not escape the world's notice. The entire command team of the Samaritans was pinging him. Casa was pinging him. Bo was pinging him. Mira was pinging him. He sighed.

"Heh. You just accessed the mailer daemon. If I was still wearing a meat body, my expression would have been the same." Bravo chortled. Sebastian groaned.

"Don't worry, man. Just because you're one of the special few Bills in the flesh; doesn't give you a monopoly on the whole human experience and responsibility thing. We've already moved the gate satellite in a higher orbit and shifted out of the polar plane." Bravo said.

"Well, Good. That's one thing off the list." Sebastian looked sourly at the mech.

"I wasn't finished. Jeez! As we speak, our collective is having simultaneous talks with the Samaritan commanders who are "in the know". The Valkyrie is almost at the moon, where our son and daughter expect us for a "surprise" dinner at Amundsen Paradise. I'm certain Casa will be there as well. We got this man! We are legion."

Sebastian deflated and relaxed as Bravo dissembled his concern expertly and set his mind at ease. The memories of the various conversations flowed into him as he stretched into the gestalt.

"You're right…. we're right. A short break to reset and align ourselves." Sebastian projected forward as pieces sorted themselves in his expanded mind. The world was changing fast now, and it wouldn't slow down. He knew more was coming. He needed to think carefully about it. He turned to see his healed clones sitting up slowly.

"Time for grim thoughts later. We need to celebrate the return of our no longer broken copies. Maybe we need to formalize some names. I don't know about you boys, but I'm done with throwing myself on grenades." Sebastian said.

"Hear fucking hear," Bravo said with a slow clap. "No more expeditions to the murder verse without fucking nukes."

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