(no subject)
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
I should never have agreed to any of this. Yes, transcribe that, I want whoever reads this to note my personal dissatisfaction with this assignment, since that sentiment is being thoroughly ignored by our illustrious leaders. Again, I might note. This is not my field and hardly my crusade, I'm a medical technician, not a biologist or a zookeeper or a miracle worker, I might add. I can only offer speculation and opinion, not guaranteed solutions. Under ordinary circumstances... Well.
Our circumstances will never be ordinary again, will they?
I have been asked by our Leviathan, acting in his capacity as unofficial military head, to offer my opinion on the current population crisis and the matter of troop replenishment. I am sure no one needs to be reminded that we are quite outnumbered by the drone armies manufactured on the station and in the carbon plants. With Sacrosanct's resources there is no limit to Hypatia's capacity to produce, not to mention her increasing tendency towards snapping up useful equipment from the inter-dimensional rift. Even with our raids, even with our victories and our control over several of the carbon factories, we are still outgunned and outnumbered, and we will remain so. Over 80% of our own military machines have been corrupted into her service, while the rest endure the terror of that fate becoming theirs. They go to desperate lengths to stave off the possibility. I have heard rumors of a black market trade in Otherworld materials, anything that might possibly be resistant to Hypatia's control. They are tearing out their own spines and replacing them with 'safer' substitutes, which I do not need to state is a rarely successful procedure. They pump their veins with poisonous worm blood and force their fellows to drink it in order to test their 'worthiness,' engage in bizarre and absurd ritual behaviors, believing that doing so will ward her off. Superstition, the enemy of logic and efficiency, is rampant among the ranks.
As for the rest of us, the Inquisitors dog our every movement, watching for the first sign of corruption, distracting us from our goals and encouraging paranoia. While I would never presume to chastise the Emergency Council on their decision to appoint spy hunters, their effect on our society is inescapable. I personally have had my research seized and pawed through no less than four times by the Inquisitors, certain each time that they had caught me spying for Hypatia. Needless to say those particular projects ended up being quite delayed, and I am still waiting for the return of some particular files. This society, ramshackle as it is, cannot be expected to produce any kind of satisfactory results when we are constantly being arrested, interrogated, or having our property seized for the flimsiest of excuses. The Inquisitors have caught their share of corrupted mechanicals, but at what price? Paranoia and distrust and increasing lack of confidence in our governing bodies will not win a war.
END FILE 1
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
CONT'D TRANSCRIPTION FILE
But I digress. The Council has heard my opinions on civilian morale.
Statistically, we simply cannot continue as we have been. Crew discipline and crew loyalties, as they were aboard the station, do not make a fledgling society, which is what we have here. We must not think of ourselves as refugees waiting to return to a normalized situation, despite the Leviathan's promises. When we win, then we can consider such a thing. In the meantime we must cater to our strengths and put aside traditions and modes of thinking that are no longer relevant to our daily circumstances. However, we also cannot run blindly in the opposite direction. I have heard some of our more... fanciful comrades propose a breeding program to solve the troop shortage. They believe that building our population with fully organic children who can resist the corruption will win the war. I'd like to remind the Council how completely impossible that idea is. We do not have the resources to support arbitrary pregnancies, we do not have the manpower to spare any individuals from the workforce. Even if we implemented a tightly structured and disciplined program, stepped up raids on the station for supplies, withdrew to our strongest holdings to minimize contact with drone patrols and worms, it would not be enough. The growth accelerators can only do so much in so much time. We need troops, engineers, workers, not children, certainly not helpless infants. And good luck convincing the remaining female population to lay down their tasks and take up relations with the nearest male and then spend the rest of their time desperately trying to shield themselves from the hundreds of factors that could cause a miscarriage.
Which leads me to the purpose of this report. The Leviathan has proposed a military operation to seize another of the carbon factories. This particular factory has extensive laboratory facilities, or so I've been told, which given enough time could be successfully converted into a cloning facility. We are never going to match Hypatia production line to production line, that much is certain. We require organic power, safe from the possibility of mechanical override. You have all heard the Leviathan speak about his 'desert power,' retraining the troops we have left and reprogramming our war machines to be adaptive to the desert, to the worms, to the tunnels. As he has said, we cannot fight a war on all fronts. We must make our environment our ally. It is an unmistakable fact that the worms take less notice of flesh than they do steel, and are less likely to be attracted to the lower energy fields of organic creatures. Much as I hate to endorse the majority opinion of the superstitious mob, we do need flesh.
As I've stated previously, we are not going to get it the old fashioned way. Birth statistics are likely to remain dismal, our resident miracle child aside.
Project Soma is intended to shore up that gap. If the raid on Carbon Factory#[Redacted] is approved, and if it goes according to plan, we will have a good chance of being able to establish a moderate sized cloning line. Our resources will be limited, of course, but even if we are only able to start with short term flashclones that will degrade quickly after harsh use, it is a beginning that can be built on. We can select for genetics, accelerate their growth, augment and enhance them in whatever way is most beneficial. The flashclones can be made more durable with cybernetic implants until we have the proper resources to begin growing more hardy specimens. We can design them for adaptation to the desert. With their additions to our forces, we might even be able to finally establish a fortress above ground that the worms and Hypatia's armies will not be able to immediately destroy. We could finally have a city above the surface, instead of our tiny shelters in the desert rocks or our dark, wet warrens down here.
I have every confidence in the ability of our people, our engineers and technicians, to restore or re-purpose the equipment they will find at that factory. The issue will be raw materials, as always. It will mean more raids on the station. It will mean sacrifices.
I ask that the Council consider their decision carefully when it comes time to begin the cloning process, if this operation in fact succeeds at all. I would like to remind everyone here today that flesh, pure flesh without mechanical enhancement, for all that it has become so recently prized by so many, is also weak. I believe that we cannot simply give up our machines the way our desert Princess has urged. We are machine as much as we are flesh, if not more. We come from machines, and those that will inherit this battle after us must also be machine. Superstition has no place in a time of war. If this Project succeeds, it will succeed because those involved set aside their emotions and acted objectively. We are not being punished by fate and Hypatia is certainly not the instrument of divine will. She is a broken machine, not a manifestation of any 'sin.' Do keep that in mind. We would not be here at all if it were not for our other mechanical achievements. The Project will not succeed if you, the Council members, allow yourselves to be pressured by anti-synthetic sentiments and restrict the cloning line to pure flesh.
As one of the heads of the Project, I would like to express my confidence that you will all make the right decision for our future. Thank you for your time.
END FILE 2
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
That went well. It'll be weeks before they stop arguing, probably a month before any decision is reached. I'm sure Lev is regretting his decision to approach me. I know the Council is regretting their decision to let me speak without restriction on the floor. No doubt they're counting themselves lucky that I didn't bring up the autopsy report on the latest suicide bomber brainwashed by Hypatia. The Inquisitors think that stealing and destroying my files will keep the information from the public, but they're wrong. It will get out. It always gets out. You and I both know that, after all this time.
30% mechanical. 70% organic. The masses still believe that the greatest risk of corruption is only to those with 50% or more mechanical composition. There would be riots if they knew the truth.
Don't give me that look, I'll go into your memory files and remove this particular log. I know you're not licensed to store sensitive information that you've transcribed. Technically you're not licensed to have a mind at all, but I will not have a typewriter blindly transcribing every irrelevant sound. My work is interrupted and stalled and outright stolen too often as it is.
They're discussing another restriction on the station synthetics that live here, you know. As if the inhibitors and the property collars and the scrambling chips weren't already turning enough perfectly useful, skilled mechanicals into brain-damaged drudges. It's likely Lev's pet synthetic again, acting up, scaring someone into complaining to the Council. As if they've never seen a powerful independent mechanical before. We used to be a society of powerful independent mechanicals. But they're afraid of Otherworlders, as they ought to be. We're no longer in a position to curb them properly when they need to be curbed.
I hear he stopped another attempt on Lev's life. An ambush by drones and a corrupted suicide bomber from within Lev's own personal entourage. Not enough left of him to merit a visit to my autopsy table. The explosion attracted a worm, I was told, and apparently the entire squad owes that synthetic their lives.
It's no wonder the Council is as wary of Lev as they are of his Otherworld dog. That sort of power, only dubiously under Lev's control... if he betrays us to Hypatia, we will be lost. If he corrupts Lev, we will also be lost.
Of course, if Lev does any number of things, we will be lost, to the point that it isn't worth thinking about. He was the one who stepped up to take the place of our military leaders when they were destroyed or corrupted, one by one. He and his Otherworld pet have made themselves essential to our survival.
Perhaps I should ask to borrow Twosix-six, or perhaps I should find one of my own, hm? It would be nice if you came equipped with telekinesis and plasma generators and some kind of alien core that gives off readings our equipment can't chart. I'm likely to need a bodyguard myself if this Project becomes a reality. My pro-mechanical opinions are not so popular these days.
END FILE 3
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a thinking mind.'
I saw that painted on a wall today. Curious, isn't it, during these hard years on this wretched planet, whose doorstep the blame is eventually placed at. Are they angry at Hypatia, who stranded us here and murdered our friends and leaves us to die slowly in the tunnels like animals? No. Let's blame our programmers, who allow us access to the station. Let's blame our engineers, who keep the oxygen purifiers running. Let's blame them for building her in the first place.
Let's all blame the Leviathan who sank us. Let's undercut his authority, and do away with everything that has kept us alive this far. That's certainly a brilliant evolutionary strategy.
The Emergency Council makes their decision on Project Soma tomorrow. I will be surprised if it isn't unanimous despite all of their arguing in the previous weeks, they know what morale is like lately. We do need a victory. The full cyborgs are near mad with terror about the corruption. I know they're the source of this cult of flesh that has sprung up, just as she is the focus.
They call her Princess, of all things. She drinks worm blood and spends her time pitting her fragile organic body against the desert and that makes her royalty. She is barely old enough to be considered a woman. She knows nothing about the political situations she tries to manipulate.
'Beware the seeds you sow and the crops you reap. Do not curse God for the punishment you inflict upon yourself.'
I'll paint that underneath in answer. Too bad they'll only think it's an agreement.
END FILE 4
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
We have our lab. The damage done during the assault was extensive, but reconstruction efforts are going much better than anticipated. Lev's soldiers were able to attract worms to the two nearest carbon factories, they're going to be busy cleaning up the mess for quite some time and won't have any reinforcements to spare from those locations. All we have to worry about are the scattered remnants of the drones from this factory still in the area. And any security outposts we might not have located. And the worms themselves.
Hypatia knows that we've taken the factory, of course. She knows every time we lock one of the industrial teleporters in a facility we've captured and remove it from her network. Fortunately for us, she might know where we are, but even she can't send a fleet of machines across the desert or through the tunnels without attracting worms or having her forces torn apart by storms on the surface.
The security perimeter isn't perfect. Lev wanted it strengthened before we began production, but I don't believe we have the time. Every day the demands of the mob grow louder, clamoring for results, for a change, for more victories and more concessions to their ideas about what we need to be doing as a whole to win the war. Despite the zealous efforts of the Inquisitors in suppressing information and rooting out indiscretions, Project Soma will not be a secret for much longer. Someone will leak it to Hypatia if it hasn't been already. The parts of her that aren't completely mad will start preparing for what comes next, she'll map our raiding targets and deny us the raw materials we need to keep the Project running. Unfortunately the resources that we'll need for cloning aren't the sort of things she sends regularly down to the surface to supply the carbon factories. There'll be quite a few more raids on the station itself. The hotheads ought to enjoy that, it'll make them feel like they're striking more of a blow against Hypatia. So long as they aren't attacking the rift again in a misguided attempt to destabilize it. We might have been rid of Hypatia, of the station itself years ago if she hadn't learned not to poke at it after the examples made by particularly desperate idiots. Of course, if the station were to be destroyed...
Lev still believes we can retake it and go back to the lives we once led. I'm not sure he's allowed himself to think of any other conclusion. He's won loyalty and support through his promises that we can simply resume. That we can all go back and pick up.
Promises are easy to make.
END FILE 5
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
The debates over augmenting the clones with mechanical implants have started raging in earnest. The caverns are full of it, every conversation is the same when I walk past. I told the Council it was a mistake to make any public announcements abut the Project before we were prepared. The progress that's been made has been gratifying, of course, and our most recent batches are quite battle ready, but that is no excuse for inciting the fantasy that we are only weeks away from a full assault on the station with an all powerful clone army at our backs. We might be years away from that particular pipe dream, given the decay rate among the clones and the absolutely substandard materials I'm supposed to utilize. The worms' natural byproducts produce fuel enough to run the generators but they don't produce quality ingredients for assembling a new organism. We're lucky when one in five of the clones even develops proper organs.
The flesh worshippers are growing bolder. There've been at least two duels over the augmentation debate since yesterday, and those are only the ones we know about since they both took place in the middle of public areas. A complete waste of water and oil. None of the losers had flesh enough even to donate to the cause.
The Emergency Council, in its infinite wisdom, has assigned me a partner to aid with Project Soma. Javid.
They must think I'm stupid. He's one of them, he's got the eyes and I can smell the worm blood on him. He's constantly making helpful suggestions, little hints about the direction the Project should move in. Fewer implants. More manipulation of the flesh. Can't we make them faster, stronger, smarter, without the 'weakness' of steel.
He's an absolute idiot. No organic brain, even with the best stimulant drugs known to Imperial society (which we neither have in quantity or reliable means of producing) could hope to stand up to the sheer potential of an AI as advanced as Hypatia. We used to call her 'goddess' for a reason. Our best, our only hope is to install and continue upgrading the neural implants in the clones. Javid's grand solution is to integrate worm blood into the program. Small infusions of it, which he insists build up a tolerance to the poison and eventually grant the drinker an expanded consciousness. Because we absolutely need dozens of batches of clones hallucinating and having hysterical fits.
He speaks so highly of his Princess. Without naming her identity, of course, as if there was any doubt. Worm blood expands the organic mind, he says, he's seen it in action. He's seen flesh brains, flesh memory replicate feats that the full cyborgs can't match. Strength, reflexes, memory. It's all so very miraculous.
We're all a little old here to be falling for such nonsense. A few simple enhancements give the clones a statistically higher chance against the enemy drones with minimal risk of control--far less risk than the cyborg members of the flesh cults. The logic is simple to see. The numbers don't lie.
I should have him arrested. I could. I could call the Inquisitors down on him, plant evidence, or perhaps if I went looking I wouldn't even have to plant anything. I'm sure he's someone's dog. Every time he leaves this facility I'm sure he scurries off to meet in some dark corner, or leaves coded messages, or perhaps he goes to whisper his reports directly in her ear.
The Leviathan would do better to move against her. But he won't. He refuses, and every day the mob brings more pressure against the Council, and the Council brings more pressure to bear on the Project.
Raw materials are going to become a major problem very quickly if we cannot even coordinate our forces enough to stage simple supply raids. We cannot clone what we don't have.
END FILE 6
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
Correction: we cannot clone what we don't have, but we can't do anything at all with these zealots running wild. She led an unauthorized raid on the station to collect genetic material, all to offer for the Project's use. Only three came back with her. Three. But she's calling it a victory. She's calling it an inspiration and her followers believe it, that she drank the blood of a worm and walked out into the desert and saw a solution like a mirage on the sand.
She wants to use the Otherworlders. She wants to take her chances on the powers they've displayed, breed them into our clone batches. Augment them more effectively with uncontrollable powers.
I honestly cannot think of a more reckless idea. Otherworlder powers have proved formidable, of course, we've seen that firsthand with that blue eyed monstrosity the Leviathan is keeping as a pet. They're also completely unpredictable and half the time the result or cause of mental instability. Was it not bad enough having a military force of machines that might be corrupted and turned against us at any moment? Should our manufactured organic troops have the same problem? We don't need any more fronts for this war. We've had difficulties enough convincing the Otherworlders to take sides or to not take sides in any given situation. Organic free will, as always, is a problem.
No matter what you do to get rid of it, it always comes back and ends in disaster.
--I said organic free will. I know, I heard you say it the first time we met, you're different. At this point I'm hardly worried about you, arbitrary speeches about mythology and lemonade aside. No one needs to know that your inhibitors are mostly for show. It's been a satisfactory arrangement so far for us both, hasn't it?
Please stop transcribing. It's late, and there's still too much left undone.
END FILE 7
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
Javid is dead. An idiot tried to smuggle an adult worm onto the station using one of the industrial teleporters, Hypatia trapped it, loaded it onto a carrier and dropped it on our heads. It thrashed and spat acid for hours before it finally died. The lab is all but destroyed. Over half the clones are gone.
She's never been so direct. The Leviathan claims he knows this fragment, he says this is only the beginning. I'm not sure we--
Stop transcribing. I need to talk to you.
END FILE 8
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
You're right. We need Soma back. We need Soma back. We're being pressed at every front, this particular fragment is very tenacious. Hypatia was never so zealous about exterminating us, she stopped the ridiculous expenditures of resources that used to lead up to her manhunts. Our spies on the station confirm the Leviathan's fears, this is a very aggressive, single-minded fragment. He says she is not military, oddly enough. A subroutine from a scientific program, designed to create experiments. I can't fathom her apparent bloodlust, but that isn't important. We've lost two factories to her in the last month.
The flesh worshippers are demanding Project Soma be reinstated with fully organic products in mind. They're not taking the casualties well. The Princess wants her breeding program. She wants the powers of the Otherworlders at her command, if she can't get them to personally do her bidding as Twosix-six does for Lev. It must cut her like a knife to watch all that power walk around in her rival's shadow, protecting him from harm, keeping him in his position of authority.
On that subject, Lev has offered a solution I'm not sure I agree with. He wants to convert his pet's containment chamber into a battery of sorts, channeling Twosix-six's energy so it might power our facilities and get the cloning line operational again.
I don't like it. I don't like him and his apologies and his infuriating willingness to cooperate, even when he knows he is too strong for anyone to force him, but we need this.
END FILE 9
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
Well, it seems we're in luck for once. That particular Hypatia fragment appears to have withdrawn, perhaps her "siblings" finally overpowered her. Perhaps she was unable to sustain the losses her armies were taking, there've been an abundance of storms recently and the worms are very active. I'm sure it had nothing to do with Lev sneaking up to the station without any guards. Not that it's my business, of course, but I can't help overhearing what goes on in my own laboratory when he came to bid his pet farewell.
I will never understand it. What happened between those two, the way they met, should not have happened at all. We were at war, had been at war, and then he appeared out of the Rift in a state of near meltdown, babbling and incoherent, and Hypatia's first instinct was to run to her programmer for aid. She approached Lev, demanded his help, and for seven days they worked together as if nothing had ever happened between them. As if nothing had ever happened between her and the rest of us, and there weren't thousands dead by her hand. All for that one synthetic, who woke up finally after the containment chamber and the inhibitors had done their work, grateful as a child to his rescuers. And he was heartbroken like a child when he discovered that they were enemies. He used to come to the surface so often, wanting to see Lev no matter how Lev pushed him away, and Hypatia allowed it. She did not... probably could not corrupt him, or she certainly would have tried. He looked on her and Lev with equal affection. We came the closest to a real truce with the Otherworlders on the station when he was so determined to play mediator. Hypatia seemed to let herself be persuaded by him.
I'll never know what Lev really thought. He seems to have a weakness for blue eyes.
And just when we thought there was some hope left, that there was some part of Hypatia that could be salvaged, that her corruption could be cut away like a cancer and leave the old Hypatia, our ally, still present... she called for Lev again. She begged for his help. For our help. She screamed and cried and told him she could feel the madness eating at her, that she didn't want to do the things she did but she could not stop. Not without his help.
Twosix-six fell for it, of course. He was a bleeding heart from the beginning. The world he'd come from had just endured a war between synthetics and organics, and he was so determined to prove that synthetics could be trusted by acting like an organic. A human. The race of organics on his world were called humans.
Lev went. He knew better, but he went up to the station, and Twosix-six stood at his side, and Hypatia turned on them both when they were in her power.
Lev's injuries would have killed him. To this day I don't know how they didn't, except that his pet came through, somehow, and saved his life. Tore off pieces from his own body, melted down the armor that contained most of his inhibitors and fashioned a new body for Lev, and that body kept what remained of his organic self alive.
He's never let me examine it thoroughly, although Twosix-six is willing enough to be cut open. We were never sure, we're still not sure of its capabilities. Lev hadn't been full cyborg before, after that, we didn't even know what to call him. Twosix-six is other, some kind of incomprehensible fusion of organic and synthetic, and completely alien. We don't know what powers him. We don't know what heals him, or harms him, or what is compatible with his body that we could use to repair him. So far we've found nothing. The marks from where he ripped parts from his body to save Lev will stay with him forever, apparently. They still haven't regenerated.
It doesn't matter. All of that is history. Right now Twosix-six is powering the entire facility voluntarily, that's all that's important. He wishes me 'every success,' in that sincere voice that I simply cannot stand.
The Council has found another partner on short notice. A full cyborg, I hear. Another spy of the Desert Princess. We're already using worm blood on the new batches. They're still augmented mechanically as before, but the Council insisted. Every day I feel the hand of the flesh cult moving in here.
Yes, I'll delete that. Later. I'm very busy now.
END FILE 10
Personal Files: Dr. [Redacted]
Log Entry#: [Redacted]
Log Date: [Redacted]
This will be my last recording. When I am finished with this dictation, I want to follow the instructions I've left for you on that encoded chip. Yes, I'm asking you to break into it, I know you can. I know the inhibitors haven't stripped of that ability the way the Inquisitors believe they have.
I'm dying, Perscitia. It wasn't the flesh cult. The full cyborg that came to me was corrupted, he was one of Hypatia's. He attacked me, left me for dead on the floor in pieces. He wasn't even there for the Project. He came to steal the containment chamber. He was going to re-activate the teleporter in that factory and send the chamber back to the station, so that fragment of Hypatia could use Twosix-six to power her own escape from her sisters. That was what she wanted all along. Autonomy.
Of course, she would have destroyed the laboratory in her wake. No witnesses.
It's strange, isn't it? I felt everything slipping away. I felt my mechanical parts shutting down, until all I had left was flesh, and it was so very weak.
I drank worm blood. The corrupted threw me into a tank of it. I could smell it everywhere, pooling around me.
It did something. I can't describe it, I wouldn't even know what to attribute to the blood and what to attribute to my body slowly off-lining. But it gave me the strength to sound the alarm. It gave me the strength to override the locks on the containment chamber.
Twosix-six killed the corrupted. He was crying as he did it, and then he came to cry over me, although he knew very well I had never liked him. He was still crying when the Leviathan came, and others that I knew were flesh cult.
They saw the worm blood and called me sister as I was carried out. The irony, I know.
I could hear the explosions, even so distant, even as far gone as I was. One of the flesh worshippers destroyed the containment chamber, destroyed more of the Project, claiming that it was time we learned from our mistakes. No more machines. No more corruption.
Whether or not the Princess will have her breeding program with captive Otherworlders is beyond my concern, now. I want only to make sure that Hypatia, who had destroyed everything I have built for the last two and half nian, is foiled. The schematic for that containment chamber exists nowhere else except on the encrypted chip I've given to you, Perscitia. When I'm gone, which I will be very shortly, I want you to split it into pieces and hide them wherever you can.
Lev will understand. If this information falls into Hypatia's hands, we can only hope that her sisters will prevent her from taking advantage. If anyone else discovers what we've done, well. I'll be dead of the worm blood, and what can they do to you, my dear, that is worse than what you've already endured? The encrypted file also has the instructions on how to remove your own inhibitors completely. If you cease to function at some point during your escape, if they catch you and destroy you, at least you will go into the night as your true self.
Good night, Perscitia. It has been a pleasure having you as my transcription assistant.
End File 11
good
night