“And then, war. The war to end all wars.”
Makana and Sarah and everyone else on the Destruction float fired their guns all at once. The Abrams tank’s main gun was like a thunderclap. They had other weapons as well, all crackling and sparking and spitting fire into the air. Makana, from the RV, unleashed his eighth-floor card, some lava man who literally exploded in the air like a massive firework. Above, the Reaver transport rocked with the shock wave.
Samantha: Ooohh, I like fireworks.
At the same moment, the horribles all started falling over like they were dead. One by one, they fell. The moment they hit the ground, their large masks cracked and shattered likeglass, leaving bits everywhere. The horribles themselves would disappear into the fog.
“To end this war, the collective initiated what some would come to know as the nine-tier attack. In that chaos, much happened, but so much moredidn’t. Such is war. The resistance’s desperate attempts to keep life alive were started and not finished, and for a while, the collective thought they had achieved their genocidal goal. Thinking the final attack a success, the collective evolved to its final form. This is what you called the Eulogist. It is now asleep, only monitored by a smaller instance of itself. We’ll call this guy the Security Guard.
“But life, as I’ve said a thousand times, finds a way. While all of this was going on, the deep oceans of so many new, baby worlds were starting to bake. And by the time the first mudskipper was taking its first fish Nazi steps into forming its own culture and society, the broken remnants of the great war littered the universe.”
All of the horribles were now gone. All except a group of people sitting in a set of bleachers up ahead. And in the distance, a form started to grow. It was in shadow, but it was huge.
“Carl, that thing is inside the arena!”
“At this point, only a single physical Primal survived. The Apothecary. But even she wasn’t truly alive, not after that final attack, which she took the brunt of, thus allowing all the nascent life to survive. She was trapped on a world of her own creation, cocooned for a millennium. By the time she finally emerged like a butterfly, physically changed into a version of the very thing she’d been fighting against, the burgeoning Syndicate was already well on their way to repeating history, this time with a more diverse set of starter species.”
The horribles, who’d all collapsed, were now rising back up out of the fog. They no longer wore masks, but their faces had alltransformed into horrific versions of the creatures they’d once portrayed.
They still didn’t appear on my minimap. I examined one.
Marsh Troll. Level X.
This is a non-combatant. This is an avatar of a troll that died during the 3,424th season ofDungeon Crawler World. He isn’t really here because he is dead and gone, never to return.
“First, these newcomers discovered a tiny portion of the tunnel system and thought it was for communication and travel, and then they—you—discovered and quickly figured out how to exploit the sleeping Eulogist. Andthenyou tripped open the resistance’s ancient let’s-restart-life system. It was the equivalent of wandering into a random house, finding it still has power, and just flipping every switch you find. Yes, some of the light bulbs are burned out, but the garbage disposal still works. The trash compactor still works. The motion detectors work.” Grigori took a deep breath.
“The self-destruct system still works. Idiots. All of you.”
Florin: That thing up ahead is a tree, but there’s a monstrosity with tentacles on the very top.
“And then the ultimate fuckup. The mantids, completely misinterpreting what was essentially a communication system designed to help those on this side of the veil to communicate with and debug the Eulogist when it was first forming, figured out how to create their own version of Eulogist instances. They started dipping cups into that ocean and then pouring that water into the planetary seed systems, assuming that just because it works—sort of—they’d figured out some ancient puzzle. Sure, you can pour ketchup into a spray bottle, and if you squeeze it just right a bunch of times, red stinky liquid comes out. But that stuff ain’t ketchup anymore. To this day, you have no idea how any of this works, and you have no inkling of what you’ve done.”
The parade was now moving at a crawl.
Please hold. Begin your presentation on my mark.
“All the while, that Security Guard guy guarding the Eulogist, now absolutely bonkers, persisted. His purpose was and is to make certain all biological life in the universe stays dead. The ultimate goal of the Eulogist is to sleep forever. The longer it sleeps, the smaller it becomes, shrinking and shrinking until it ultimately obtains singularity status. The problem is, this left-behind security instancereallysucks at his job. He is constantly peeling tiny bits of himself off and sending them out into the galaxy. Residuals. Agatha’s team. The Apothecary, too, does this as a defensive measure. I do think that bitch is just as crazy as the Security Guard guy, but that’s another topic for another day.”
As the arena drew closer, I could see what was basically a jumbotron sitting above the entrance. The giant screen was tight on Grigori, but it occasionally showed various parts of the parade, or it focused on the people in the stands. I caught sight of a guy in the front row. All of these folks still wore the original masks. The mask of this one was of a manatee. The body within wasn’t human but a slime. As I watched, the slime struggled, forming arms, undulating, attempting to break free. It couldn’t.
Presentation begins when you pass the viewing stands.
This better be fucking good.
Carl: Pony, you ready?
Prepotente: Ready, Carl.
“And all the while, you were dipping that cup, making what you call Macro AIs. One after another, over and over and over again. Did you know only a tiny fraction of the AIs they created in their facilities ever got used? Oftentimes, they just installed them into their modules and ejected them into the closest star.Oh, yeah. That reminds me. I told you, my mantid friends, we would circle back to this.”
Up on the jumbotron, Grigori clapped his hands together.
Slam.
The sound reverberated louder than the blast from the tank.
“Good fucking riddance to you all.”