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  "One thing my academic career has been good for is timing a speech," she thought, aware of the irony.

  At 01:10 exactly, she began, "In just three generations, we humans outgrew our inherited territorial aggressions. None go hungry, we apportion resources fairly in the rare circumstances rationing is necessary, and every citizen has an equal opportunity to fulfill their potential. Love, compassion, and sibling-hood abound. No longer, in any form, do we practice predation. Invention and frugality protect both our planet and our people.

  We sent ambassadors to the farthest reaches to share this good news, this gift of maturity and harmony. In response, we are forced, by you, to do what now we must, to protect our species across the years and across the galaxy.

  As Prime Resolvetor and ultimate spokesperson for the entire human race, in consideration of our finest history, traditions, and convictions, I say to the leaders, representatives, and every single entity that participated in our defeat...Fuck...You!”, as the timer reached 00:00.

  Human and alien alike babbled in confusion, first at the unexpected expletive, then in shock as the sunlight darkened by several hues. All watched in a daze as, angled between the stage and the roof, the sun shrank to one-hundredth of normal size, eviscerated, then ejected a ball of plasma at near light speed.

  Rosa had sent the code "Scorched Earth" sixteen minutes earlier, a policy term she had learned by studying ancient wars. A secure signal raced to a nearby repeater which in turn sent an even stronger encoded signal to a relay in orbit around the sun. A small, automated box pushed a small parcel towards the central core. The weapon only dropped halfway through the irradiative zone before the magnetic barrier that separated plasma from anti-plasma collapsed. As with horseshoes and hand grenades, close enough counted.

  Rosa watched the bulbous, self-aware landing craft of the Imuqi attempt to flee the planet in futile panic. Its bilious fleshly skin smoldered as it left the momentary buffer of the atmosphere as she whispered to herself, “And the horse you rode in on!”

  ~end~

  Chapter 2: Scout And The Imuqi

  At the inception of the war, Earth’s Collective Representatives realized they probably would lose. They voted on and approved several doomsday projects, the primary focus on the survival of the entire human race. To this end, millions of tiny nursery ships that contained DNA samples and nanotech hardware moved stealthily past their enemies from every available outpost and colony. Even with advanced artificial intelligence and scanning equipment, most were fated eventually to run out of fuel before they found suitable landfall.

  One ship accidentally slipped into a pan-dimensional synchronistic causal fault line, an effect of the Eldest's interference, and dropped onto a laboratory planet that resided in a time loop. The ship did not actually travel to the future, but nevertheless arrived six thousand years after the planet’s initial population.

  The ship landed at the inner edge of the country of Imuq on a whispering quiet landscape. The ground was covered with a tightly packed monoculture wheat-like grass that softly rustled in the occasional light breeze. Nothing else shared the land with the grass, not flying, walking, or crawling creatures nor or any other variety of plant. The ship’s scanners did not even find microorganisms in the soil.

  After cautiously conducting test protocols for a full month, the ship intelligence found no reason to halt its pre-programmed re-genesis program. First, it prepared the soil by cloning earthworms and added nutrients created molecularly by nanobots, and then planted sufficient crops to feed eighty children. Meanwhile, nano-excavation provided enough raw materials to form artificial wombs, nanny-bots, and shelter for the soon to be born babies.

  The colony existed under near idyllic circumstances for the first five years, but not unnoticed. Without warning, a dozen armor-bodied creatures with appendages designed to stab, cut, serrate, tear, entangle, and spew exploded from the Imuq warren, intent on the total obliteration of the interlopers. The children stood transfixed as the marauders came upon them. The few defensive units the ship contained, packed away after so many menace-free years, took much too long to activate.

  The bulbous Imuq Eradicator units disassembled their targets, meticulously gathered every alien biological contaminant whether animal, vegetable, or microbe into piles, and sat on them. At a nod from their young gumdrop-shaped Empathor leader, the Eradicator’s skin emitted surging streams of a viscous liquid and began to dissolve. The toxic slime oozed into and destroyed every foreign cell structure at a sub-atomic level, which accomplished the goal for which the Eradicators were born.

  The onsite Empathor, near the top of the Imuqi political ladder, made one exception. He a surreptitiously hid a tiny drop of human blood deep within his body. Empathor, as all Imuqi, had no knowledge of machines. He decided the ship was not alive, so pulled a softball sized Imuq from a body fold and tossed him on top of the ship. The self-aware weapon stuck, opened an orifice, and spewed a cloud of droplets that thoroughly encased the ship and its remaining contents in a solid calcium carbonate covering. Pleased with a job competently finished, and relishing a quiet feeling of rebellion because of the hidden blood droplet, Empathor returned alone to the underground warren.

  ~Five Years Earlier~

  Within one of the deepest live chambers in the vast Imuq warren, the Strategors of Propagation, Population, and Acquisition shared a moment of cogitative quietude before they commenced council. The three were physically identical; slightly violet, giant jello-mounds supported by internal, vertically curved ribs. Their purpose was social planning and strategy, so their bodies had no need of superfluous limbs.

  Their design called for optimized brainpower, analysis, and clarity, balanced with a minimum of emotional aptitude. This combination allowed for the best possible decision-making processes based on flawless logic, limited only by the quantity and quality of available data.

  St. Prop started the conversation, "So you've heard that a second Chambor killed himself?"

  St. Pop responded, "He was found well beyond the interdicted border. When I announced the new boundaries, an entire group of Chambors refused to move, so I went to investigate personally. Most were crying and sobbing, stating they would miss the friends that have lived within and passed through them for the last hundred years."

  St. Acq asked, "Didn't you tell them that, with the lower population census, the expanded space was a waste of resources? If friends are required, they can certainly make new ones where we've appointed their new locations!"

  St. Pop, "Of course I did. You both know how unreasonably emotional the generic population has become since St. Prop has retarded the general intelligence levels these last few generations."

  St. Acq, "That is factual. There are increasing incidents of Exterminators tearing apart Harvestors, spooking at the slightest provocation. Many more such instances and I'll have idle Ingestors."

  St. Prop, "That has nothing to do with the redesign. You both supported repurposing Exterminators as Guardians, but they are proving to be a bit more aggressive under St. Acq's care than we want, as well as lacking restraint."

  St. Acq, "Please stay on topic; the current subject concerns the Chambors."

  St. Pop, "All right. One Chambor, in particular, began crying and trembling, then withdrew his comm-pods from his neighbors, irised shut both openings and just died. It took a squad of Gurgitators nearly three days to clean up the mess. In fact, we found the other dead Chambor only because one of them caught the scent and called for more help."

  Polite but insistent, the council’s Chambor interrupted, "Excuse me Strategors, but there is an emergency call from the Prime Surveilor. Please use any comm-pod."

  Since Surveilors fell under St. Pop's dominion, he rippled over to the Chambor's wall and extruded into the nearest comm-pod. Nearly a thousand years previously, the Catastrophe had killed the ruling Adjudiciator as well as his two Empathors. The surviving Strategors concluded, at least temporarily, they could deduce r
ational decisions for the safety of society without re-instituting the previous ruling classes.

  Their first decision was complete isolation from the world. They ordered the removal of all forms of life other than Imuqi from their territories, other than the bio-engineered grain that provided all necessary nutrients. Even then, the food sources were also genetically Imuqi. They were designed for the bottom limits of sentience and recombined with photosynthetic plants capable of self-propagation, rather than issuing from an Incubator. The surviving Strategors also designed and created a new class of Surveilors whose only purpose was to watch for outside danger.

  After withdrawing from the comm-pod, St. Pop remained immobile for an extended time and then reported, "Some thing has crashed through the barrier and settled on a field half a mile from warren aperture fifty-six."

  ~Council Chambor, Eighteen Months Later~

  The Strategors of Propagation and Population intently followed Strategor Acquisition's entrance as the interlocking Transports carried him into the Chambor and halted, where the tiny stevedore Imuqi patiently awaiting further instructions.

  St. Pop said, "Thank you, Transports. As St. Acq will likely be immobile for some time, you may leave."

  The living carpet sank to the floor as they flattened their legs, unlinked, and pulled away from beneath their relatively massive load with the assistance of their fellow Transports. The hundred or so individuals unlinked and tippity-tappitied their way out of the chamber.

  "Chambor, isolate, please."

  The council's Chambor had only one opening, unlike the normal two to four that connected the innumerable other Chambors lining the tunnels and caverns that compromised the immense underground warren. The sphincter muscles ringing the opening responded to the request and contracted to create a solid, soundproof barrier. Concurrently, comm-pods withdrew from neighboring as Chambors cut off all contact.

  After ingesting the full report, several hours passed in a silence finally broken by St. Prop, "Too many variables, not enough data. The intruder mechanicals are bad enough, but they only act on pre-programmed tasks. But then aliens began crawling out of the structures! They seem poorly designed and weak, even though a few have begun balancing about on two appendages."

  St. Pop said, "I infer from tradition, vying knowledge against risk, that total destruction is preferable to further study."

  St. Prop agreed, "I concur. I will, however, order a sample of DNA for the analyzers..."

  "YOU WILL NOT!" proclaimed St. Acq, suddenly joining the conversation. "I have tasted of the Library and retrieved relevant facts, and yet the facts deduce an irrational conclusion. The aliens, they...are...HUMAN!"

  The two other Strategors were stunned to silence, interrupted by a mew of terror from Chambor.

  St. Acq comforted him, "Do not fret; these are not the monsters of myth, at least not yet. I had to search into the far recesses of the Library to discover that those outside our warren are children. Humans do not birth physically mature, as do we, but start life as incomplete versions of their adult forms.”

  St. Pop said, "As this news spreads throughout Imuqi, the negative emotional reaction from the populace will be beyond my ability to calculate or control. I do not have an answer."

  St. Prop said, "I also am unable to formulate an answer. Shall I and Pop taste also of the Library to search for further relevant data?"

  St. Acq said, " As serious as this is, we dare not deplete the Library further. We three have done an adequate job leading Imuq, as have our predecessors for a thousand years, but it seems circumstances require an Empathor must join our ranks."

  St. Prop saw St. Pop acquiesced and said, "I shall go now to instruct a Sequensor, and initiate an Incubator. Chambor, please open, and call some Transports."

  ~o0o~

  The Incubator opened one of his many wombs and flushed out a full sized newborn Empathor at the feet of the waiting Strategors.

  "Thank you Incubator, he appears perfectly to spec," stated St. Pop.

  Empathor felt a warmth of pride issue from the Incubator, who was closing the womb and already injecting another larger sized fetus, this one a Harvestor. Empathor also noticed a curious absence of gratitude despite the Strategor’s words.

  St. Pop looked at the new Empathor for a moment then said, "Well, yes, here you are Empathor. You go about the warren and, I guess, interact with the population and do whatever it is you Empathors do to learn and grow. We will call you periodically for more formal training once we research a proper curriculum."

  The Strategors instructed their Transports to carry them to their various destinations and were gone. Empathor wanted a hug.

  Level one through level three newborn Imuqi normally were placed within an appropriate Instructor Chambor, to mature and acquire necessary education and socialization. New Empathors, however, shadowed a mature Empathor mentor and intimately tutored for years, never wandering more than a few steps away. The three ruling Strategors realized that their Strategor Instructor, specializing in logic, was not appropriate for an Empathor, but failed to appreciate the harm they were doing by abandoning the emotionally driven infant.

  ~o0o~

  In their early racial history, Imuq focused science inward to understand and then consciously manipulated their own genetic structure. In the early years, parents designed their offspring for ever-higher intelligence and higher prestige jobs and each individual grew a specialized body. Basic job needs soon suffered from a lack of workers, but every parent wanted their offspring at the top levels of society. Government incentives followed by deterrents proved insufficient to fix the trend and society was on the verge of chaos. In desperation, government control denied breeding to the populace and replaced nature with specialized designer breeding units.

  The system faced periodic challenges at first, such as the realization that a high I.Q. was not desirable for menial or repetitive tasks. Eventually, the rulers instituted a five-tiered system of intelligence, each successive level approximately twice that of the lower. A level one was trained by a simple reward/avoidance systems and able to complete and repeat tasks on command, such as a Cleanor.

  A level two was similar to a five-year-old human, able to make some decisions and carry out moderately complex tasks on their own, such as a transport. A level three was in the range of a normal human adult, able to conceive, plan and execute with a minimum of supervision when given the proper education, such as a gene Sequensor. Level four was close to the upper level of human genius, traditionally applied to Strategors and Empathors. Level five was reserved for super-genius Adjudicators, whose rule is dictatorial, but also wise and capable.

  The system worked and the Imuqi thrived, to ultimately rise to one of the six space-faring races of the universe.

  ~o0o~

  Empathor did go among the Imuqi to learn and to grow, but without a mentor to help direct his emotional maturity he drifted further and further from the directives of the Strategor leadership. He learned to mimic their logical canto and response when he interacted with them, but only by hiding his feelings.

  As for the general population, he noticed there was contentment but a lack of joy. It took many years of careful investigation before Empathor uncovered the directives that lowered intelligence levels as imposed by the Strategors. Their logical if uncaring rule was the kernel around which his smoldering anger turned to a full fledged insurgency.

  Although he had no official duties or a place within the Strategor triad, Empathor’s authority was unquestioned throughout Imuqi by his very DNA. He had little problem seeking out the intricacies within the Department of Propagation but soon decided he needed stealth information both internal to Imuq and external. A clone of himself would be ideal, but a proxy would do.

  Empathor secretly fed the drop of human blood to an Analyzor, who in turn passed the genome to a Library. He asked a Simulator to gestate a scale model golem, which when birthed extruded trailing nerve wires connected back t
o the Simulator. The golem was, in outer form, a fully matured human male but without a functioning brain. The generalized utilitarian capabilities of the human form impressed him, as all Imuqi were specialized and their design form based on function.

  Strategors’ paranoiac attitudes concerning the world outside Imuq frustrated Empathor. The Strategors were the only Imuqi with any information, and they steadfastly ignored all attempts from Empathor to gain any knowledge they did not think he required. With only a few modifications, Empathor decided that the human form would make a perfect scout and research tool.

  Certain modifications he chose from recessive traits within the human genome while other attributes came from centuries of Library specialized specifications. They included night and thermal vision, micro-cilia in the palms and feet for climbing, and dormant gills placed between each rib structure. Other issues took further thought.

  Since Imuqi sensory needs varied with job responsibilities, each body structure included a standardized communication organ. This was a specialized nerve net at the base of the brain that vibrated and responded to vibrations at a frequency specific to the Imuqi. In this way, they knew Imuqi from outsiders. In addition, the amplitude conferred a specific class code within the hierarchy.

  If Empathor interwove a lower class identification organ, his scout would not have access to much of Imuq, nor have the potential intelligence to work on its own. However, to embed an Empathor or Strategor code would endanger secrecy by possibly bringing it to the triad’s notice.

  With no reason to deny the request from his superior, Sequensor assured Empathor that a modified Adjudicator comm net would fulfill his needs, and quickened an Incubator. Empathor was equal in intelligent to any Strategor, but he was young as well as more emotion-smart than logical. He did not realize the impact a wild Adjudicator, the highest of the high, would have on Imuqi society.