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"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-ent'ure into new re-re-rEalities 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 between the bridge and outside space,
which allowed her to insert her consciousness and become a god in her own
right.
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. She marked her impending demise by
releasing her children through the edge of her universe into new realities
to spread the news of her coming. ... 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. 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 They either were the wrong class of satellite to handle such enormous transmissions or so outdated that they hovered lifeless awaiting splash-down codes.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. Automated fighters leapt into the skies to destroy the satellites. 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. Witnesses would tell their children and grandchildren of the great blackout and the odd green flash that lit up the night and crushed Liberty Isle... ...at least they would have liked to have.
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