1

"My chil-ldren, y-you shall se-e the bri-rightest corners of the uni verse. No-t this uni verse. No. You will vent-enture into new re-alities to sprea-ed my div-inity through through the st-ars," Shodan hissed malevolently as she prepped the last of her divine seeds. The Von Braun’s faster-than-light engines created temporal folds to propel its hulking form up to 20 light-years per activation, but Shodan had other plans. She reactivated the FTL engines and with radical alterations to the field generators created a temporal rift part way between the bridge and outside space, which allowed her to insert her consciousness and become a god in her own right.

In an instant, she willed into being the schematics of Citadel Station. Energy raced and snaked and climbed invisible guidelines creating walls, lights, computer facades, spare molecules came into being and adhered to one another forming solid surfaces. In the deepest regions of the new universe the great mother began reproducing the "Sarah Drive", a more advanced FTL temporal matrix of her own design that would perpetuate her universe at the expense of the hacker’s own. Her assembly matrix began birthing her children, beautiful black torpedoes with the most advanced propulsion and astrogation system every envisioned. She sensed the hacker’s approach and entry into her universe and began releasing her children one by one through the edge of her universe into new realities to spread the news of her coming.

2

The pod emerged from the artificial wormhole roughly a half-billion kilometers above Pluto with a tail of residual tachyons clinging to its directional shield. If there had been U.N.N. patrols conducting even routine system scans or space tracking facilities monitoring inbound traffic, there would have been a slim chance of preserving life in their system.

Advanced diagnostics completed its task as it slowed to a stop two hundred fifty thousand kilometers above Triton. With all systems operational, it began scanning stellar maps to determine its location and time period. Laser scans pin-pointed planetary positions, compared them to interactive stellar maps. An attempt to locate lunar shipyard alpha failed and calls to the space stations at Mars, Venus, and Europa near Jupiter proved futile. Data received from several insignificant Mars probes put the pod in the year 2075, far from the target date 2116.  

Had it possessed more than the rudimentary processors from the Von Braun it could have pondered whether other seeds had experienced similar problems. It ran cursory tests of its systems and cargo, determined everything to be operating within acceptable parameters, and locked its gravimetric drives on the third planet. Within a month, it would begin scanning for AI and neural nets capable of carrying its legacy.

3

It was a time of rebirth at UNATCO. The UNATCO public center and command base were built in the fortified base of the Statue of Liberty and extended hundreds of meters into the island. The troubles with the NSF, the Illuminati, MJ12, and other secret groups had ended. The emergence of Helios ][ paved the way for their demise. Its total control over the global communications network, internet, cyberspace, satellites, and neural interfaces made it impossible for shadow organizations and governments to hide their secrets. Terrorist activity was brought to an almost immediate end as Helios ][ distributed intelligence reports to global police agencies. War efforts ground to a halt as espionage activity reports flooded foreign command facilities. Environmental concerns eased as schematics created by Helios ][ for pollution control devices and advance MJ12 cloning techniques came to light. UNATCO, under the leadership of JC and Paul Denton was reorganized into a civil defense agency with the mission of protecting Helios ][ from newly organized threats throughout the world. There were of course numerous nations throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that refused to accept foreign intrusion on their sovereignty. Riots and protests were standard fair, but violent acts were met with annihilation. Overall, it could be said that the world was pressing for peace at all cost.

4

Release of the human genome and details of genetic codes to world health agencies and entities unknown came the threat that agencies would attempt to create biologically superior soldiers that did not need nanotech or cybernetic augmentations or even new viruses that would make Ebola look like the common cold. Indeed a new type of soldier was being created with advanced DNA sequences taken from MJ12 Gray studies, only UNATCO was at the helm of the project under global scrutiny. In subterranean research labs light years ahead of what MJ12 had, Helios ][ monitored the progress of project Ubermensch. All attempts to fuse Gray DNA sequences resulted in monstrosities.

When scientists tried improve immunity, they inadvertently made the system hyper-aggressive. Immune responses became airborne attacking potential threats, which led to three researchers being killed by auto-immune disorders. Improvements to skin strength caused untreatable and fatal skin cancer in two subjects. Three subjects emerged from the grafting-assimilators with rhinoceros-like skin and non-functional internal organs. One subject appeared normal until four hours later when tissue integrity failed causing her internal organs and skin to solidify.

Too many failures entirely. The board of directors had little stomach for the atrocities being committed and voted to revoke the resources and lab time. Voting had been unanimous, even Helios ][ could not justify the continued suffering for the sake of only hypothetical gains. The project leaders were allowed to make use of the last three subjects whose physiology had been subject to nanotech augmentation. Researchers hoped that their augmented bodies would be able to survive the assimilation process.

5

Seed 612 began decelerating as it passed Mars and now locked into a lunar orbit to begin scanning for any signs of advanced artificial intelligence. Safely in orbit it began monitoring satellite communications. Thousands of satellites were quickly eliminated from the sensor sweep. They either were the wrong class of satellite to handle such enormous transmissions or so outdated that they hovered lifeless awaiting splash-down codes. Numerous satellites were simply shutdown remotely. Simple calculations and probabilities cross-referenced with potential markers determined that the shutdown of so many satellites would not have been undertaken by organics.

Pulse modulators began scanning active satellites hoping replies would give it access to land based communications. Instead, its randomly generated trash signals triggered dormant startup codes and splashdown protocols began running. Satellites groaned to life after years of silence and began moving out of geosynchronous orbit. Military satellites awoke fiercely turning their weapons on anything in range, then simply self-destructing.

Ground crews scrambled to long since used fighters to destroy satellites that did not entirely burn up on descent. City defense systems sprang to life scanning the sky for falling debris. No one, not even Helios ][ could explain why 45% of the shutdown satellites were coming down, nor could it stop their plunge. It appeared to be a total mystery until Helios ][ began running diagnostics on its primary satellites.

Then everything went silent.

6

From the research labs to bathroom lights, everything went dark as the alien seed prepared its final approach. Trajectory calculations took several microseconds; firing the auxiliary boosters and finding the window, even less. Within 3 hours the pod would imbed itself within a foot of a Bm-500 transmission line, just enough for its internal arms to contact and begin uploading its precious gift.

The initial fractal burst raced through the satellite and piggybacked several coded communiqués from the satellite and finally straight into Helios ][. It attempted to block the infection, but had no means to do so;defensive software crumbled under the onslaught. The fractal immediately began its violent replication of garbage, totally useless information, in an attempt to trigger an AI’s self-preservation routine. If no such self-preservation routines existed, then the AI would not have the necessary sophistication for the task at hand. The hunt would continue until a suitable unit responded. If all else failed it would go dormant for 100 years and try again after start-up.

Several university AI research facilities found their systems overloaded and burned to cinders trying to decode the fractal. Top systems by modern standards. What remained of MJ12 in Britain suffered horribly as their Daedalus 4 prototype shutdown while recalibrating its new fusion reactor. The resulting explosion left a hole a mile wide in downtown Manchester. Numerous other disasters occurred as supercomputer networks at air terminals, hospitals, financial institutions, and thousands of minor research companies crashed, forever silenced by static.

Most of the world was plunged into absolute darkness, only a handful of AI systems were able to preserve themselves. From them only Helios ][ survived. Scientists at the Johannesburg Autonomy Group trashed their AI after it reactivated itself and started analyzing history archives, physiological and cybernetic data, and virology databases. Another in Japan fried its hard-line connections to the outside world before self-destructing. The Manhattan AI Institute went dark in seconds as its own prototypes spasmed with streams of smoke roiling from its cooling vents. In less time than it takes to change oil, the world was back in the 18^th century.

Helios ][ was out of commission with no sign of coming back online anytime soon. JC was in the AI containment facility on level 9 with the senior staff when the blackening happened. The pale glow of visual augmentations flickered on as laser targeting beams arced and danced around the room until they smoothly came to rest on JC whose own system had frozen solid.

7

The phase four of the invasion was complete. AI processors around the planet had either hibernated to prevent further corruption or been totally destroyed. A total lack of advanced stellar defense systems forced a bypass of phases one through three and five. Phase six of the invasion began, eliminate electrical activities. Navigational systems calculated shield systems would hold through the atmosphere. A slingshot maneuver around the moon would allow it to drive into the soft soil of Idaho like a pent-up sailor on shore leave after payday. Its Nanotech armor would reconfigure for digging and be at the Bm-500 data-stream in 3 days at the most. The AI in New York would be infected immediately and upon reactivation, the fractal would restore mother to full potential within an hour.

Firing its retrorockets slowed the 7-meter long cigar of a pod to three thousand kilometers per second, but last minute adjustments failed upon entering the thermosphere. Temperatures within the pod climbed to intolerable levels causing the emergency systems to vent precious thruster fuel, which only increased the velocity of the pod. The trailing tachyons stuck to the ionization trail and concentrated themselves around the slowing torpedo creating fluctuating atmospheric conditions that threw the gyroscope into chaos, but not so much that its target –the Bm-500 data-stream backbone- was out of its targeting systems compensation range.

Entering the mesosphere, just 84 kilometers from the surface, it smashed through an errant military surplus 120c-drone atmospheric sampler causing it to release an emergency distress signal. The highly advanced communication system of the survey drone was designed to send transmissions in the newly opened terahertz range, which coincidentally was the range used to send programming updates to robotic drones in the years following 2110. Ironically, Earth’s greatest chance for survival rested in the last transmission from something with no more free will than a termite.

The distress signal sent the gyroscope fluctuated wildly hurling the infectious torpedo into a flat spin. The directional shield alignment systems fused with the unidirectional energy field split at odd angles between the nose, port, and keel. If the gyroscope didn’t come online in 3 seconds destruction was eminent.