Annihilation: Love Conquers All (27 page)

“I contact…” the voice paused again, and then said, “my master’s race and request instructions.”

“We call your master’s race the Alfont, named after the first race to uncover one of your artifacts.”

“I noticed in your mind that race was destroyed due to that discovery.”

“Yes,” Tag said. “Any race that uncovers any Alfont technology is destroyed to prevent them from using it to subjugate everyone else like the Alfont did.”

“My master’s signal is what brought me out of standby. Does that mean your race is now targeted for destruction?”

Tag thought for a few moments and then realized the entity had access to his thoughts. He decided that honesty was always the best way to start a new relationship. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ve doomed my race and my planet.” He felt the stark fear again.

“I’ll, as you say, think about that. I can sense your fear, and it does seem irrational to do that; I’ll ask my masters if they wish to take any action.”

“What happens if someone other than someone from your master’s race tries to enter you?”

“Usually, I kill them by disrupting their cells.”

Tag said nothing. Then he said, “Was that what you were doing when my arm went numb?”

“I started to disrupt your cells, but I noticed that my master was present and I wanted his approval before I completed the process.”

“Now that you know he’s dead, why did you not continue?”

“I want to see who and what you are and view the current situation so I can update my master’s race. You were right. My master died peacefully. He had an infection that, even with his technology, could not be cured. It took twenty thousand years for him to die and he finally did sixty-five million rotations ago; my sensors show that he did not suffer at the end. I think he came to this place to die because the life on your world fascinated him.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Contact my masters.”

Then Tag felt it again, only this time the tone was strong enough to be painful. “Well, once was our death, two won’t really matter,” Tag thought.

Then the voice said, “My master’s race is dead.”

“You could make that determination that fast?”

“There are no living masters; there are only some of their constructions that still exist. Evidently, they all succumbed to the infection. It seems no cure was ever discovered.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tag said.

He felt that vibration in his head again for a long time. Then the voice said, “You have sorrow because of my being alone?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“You think. You evaluate. You make decisions. I believe you’re alive, maybe not life that’s organic, but from hearing you in my head, you’re alive. I know what it’s like to be alone. All of your civilization is gone. All the ones you shared your thoughts with no longer exist. There can’t be any greater loneliness. I think that’s terrible.”

“When you placed your hand on my entry port, were you trying to enter to take control of my systems?”

“No! Absolutely not; you have got to make your own decisions now about your destiny. I’m certainly not qualified for the job. I just hope you don’t still think you have to disrupt my cells.”

“Then what do you want? I sense in you that you do want something.”

“I want to be a friend, and I hope you’ll help me to somehow stop my race from being annihilated.”

The buzzing in his head lasted over a minute. “I’ll consider it,” the voice said. “This friendship concept is something I have no experience about. I’ve always had someone to issue commands.”

“Well, you need a name that I can pronounce; by the way, my friends call me Tag.”

“You must have numerous friends then,” the voice said.

“Why do you say that?”

“There is a lot of electronic communication taking place overhead and they are asking for you by name.”

“I can’t receive it in here.” Suddenly Tag heard Danielle’s voice.

“Tag; Come in, Tag. Please answer. Tag, I need you to answer.” She continued to call him over and over and Tag could hear the fear in her voice.

“I can’t answer her. My radio’s not strong enough.”

“Just say what you want to say,” said the voice. “I’ll transmit it on her frequency.”

“No. I don’t want them to find you. You have to remain hidden.”

“Why?”

“Look in my mind.”

The vibration began and then the voice said, “I understand.”

“We will talk about this later if you decide not to disrupt me.” All of a sudden Tag felt tone after tone go through his body and it seemed to last for a long time.

“What did you do?”

“If the tone you caused has to be traced, then multiple points must lock in on the line of origin and triangulate. If your technology is similar to everyone else at this time, then whatever is being used to hold the tone’s line of origin can only hold one line of origin. I merely activated five hundred constructions in different locations to all send a tone together.”

“How long did it take to send all those tones?” Tag asked.

Tag’s head vibrated for moment than the voice said, “Only three of your seconds. Your brain had to process each one individually so it seemed much longer than it was.”

“Did you do this to help prevent our destruction?” Tag asked.

“Yes.”

“Did it work?”

“They probably have already determined the line of origin.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Trying to determine all these other tones will delay them. If nothing else it should cause some confusion.”

“You still need a name.”

“What name would you suggest?”

Tag thought for a moment and then said, “It needs to be short and meaningful; your name is Atlas.”

The buzzing happened and then the voice said, “Why Atlas? Isn’t he supposed to have had your world on his shoulders in your mythology?”

“Yes, and you’ve had our world above your shoulders, metaphorically speaking, for sixty-five million years, and what you just did might save us. Atlas is the right name.”

“Thank you for my name. We will talk later; I see no need to disrupt you at this time. Are you ready to communicate with your friends?”

“Yes. I think I am.”

S
tate leader Sten sat in his office and listened to the chaos taking place. Everyone on his support staff was yelling at each other and there was an inordinate amount of finger pointing and gestures that weren’t the kind that should be used in the assembly. He sat and looked out of the window at the huge city that surrounded his office, which was located in the main government building 190 stories above the sprawling city. They were on the Central Alliance World where all the races of the Alliance were governed. Sten liked looking out at the lights of the city at night that went from horizon to horizon. Often alone, he found peace staring at the city lights. Sten was a Lozian, and he was almost white due to the color of his blood that flowed close to his skin’s surface. He was four feet tall and was hairless. He had small eyes that had thick lids that could be raised in normal light or lowered in bright sunlight below a protruding brow. His head was oval shaped but had a sharp protruding jaw and nose. His body was thin and his arms and legs were also small. Even though he was small in stature, he wielded tremendous power.

When he could take no more, he pressed a button on his desk and a loud tone cut through the noise. “Enough,” he said. “Everyone sit down now and be quiet.” No one moved for a moment and he said louder, “Right now!” Everyone moved to a chair and he waited for them to be seated. “Do not speak unless I recognize you or ask you a question. I want to make sure I understand what I’ve heard here. It’s my understanding that we have detected Alfont tones and traced its origin. Headman Dgzh, is that accurate?” Several started speaking but grew silent when Sten looked at them.

“Yes leader, you’re partially right.”

“What part is missing or I have wrong, Headman?”

“There were two Alfont tones within one drag of each other, with the second being much stronger than the first. They both had the same lines of origin, we think.”

“You think? Why don’t you know? What’s the problem here?”

“Well, when the second stronger tone happened, we recalibrated the receivers to go after it because it was several degrees of magnitude greater than the first. While that recalibration was being done, our instruments were barraged by more than five hundred tones simultaneously, which appeared to originate from five hundred different directions. Our system cannot track that many. Truth be told, our system can’t track more than one at a time.”

“So what are you trying to say?”

“Leader, the receivers had not been locked on that second tone, so when the five hundred tones hit, nine of the ten receivers lost the line of origin. Only one receiver kept its original line of origin.”

“Is that enough to determine where it originated?”

The headman looked at the people assembled in the room and said, “Probably not.”

“What do you mean probably not, Headman?”

“Leader, I’m going to use your screen to see if I can explain it clearly, because this is a complicated process. Please notice that the planet Ganopur in the central hegemony is the only one that had a locked signal. It’s important to understand that these Alfont tones travel the entire universe almost instantaneously. It’s the ‘almost’ part that allows us to track a line of origin. Now I’m going to draw a line through Ganopur and have it go in both directions through Alliance territory, and then out toward both edges of the universe. The problem with these tones is that we get the line of origin but not distance. We know the tone traveled on this line, but we do not know from which side of the planet it originated. We need other locations to give other lines of origin, and where they intersect we have the location of the tone. With only one line of origin we know that it happened somewhere along that line; we have no idea if it was at the edge of the universe or right here in the Alliance.”

State leader Sten said, “I see. So you’re telling me that it happened somewhere on that line running out toward the Canith Empire or the other direction toward the Glod Union.”

“Yes, Leader.”

“Well, we can eliminate a lot of races from being the source, can we not? If you’re not located on that line, you weren’t the source.”

“That’s true, Leader. But more that fifty races fall on that line, and even more if you include those outside of the Alliance; further, it may not have even originated inside Alliance territory.”

“It’s going to be hard to justify destroying all those races without being able to prove they were actually responsible. It still might be the best course of action. What do you think?”

“Leader, three of the races on that projected line have the largest fleets of warships in the Alliance. Their total amounts to almost 20 percent of all Alliance warships. If we start to systematically destroy every race on that line, what’s to stop them from uniting to stop us? The resulting civil war would probably destroy our civilization. Destroying one race is one thing, fifty or more is quite another.”

“So what’s our best course of action? Do you have any suggestions, Headman?”

“That’s what we were yelling about. I think you have to go and look at all the races to see if they have new Alfont technology and you spend a stellar rotation with them making sure. If you have to send an occupation fleet, then you do so. The innocent will grumble but will understand. The guilty will fight, and then you’ll know where it originated. If nothing shows up, then it was probably toward the edge of the universe and won’t be a threat anyway.”

“Why did we only have ten receivers, Headman?”

“Leader, when we defeated the Alfont 2,200 cycles ago after they had discovered advanced alien technology and were subjugating all the worlds around them, the worlds that had partnered together to defeat them decided that only the ten systems involved in that war that knew the terrible price that had to be paid to defeat Alfont technology would be allowed to track it. No one else could be trusted not to go after it for selfish reasons. Those ten systems were the original founders of the Alliance. Our current civilization is a direct result of that war, and we’ve been able to maintain it by ensuring no one had technological superiority in weapons. We named the race that created that ancient technology Alfont to remind us of what it could cause.”

“Is our current technology still so far behind the Alfont as to be endangered by it now?”

“Probably. The last research done on an Alfont artifact was 190 stellar rotations ago and was the result of the Minmst race uncovering it and then notifying us of its existence and requesting its removal. We brought it here to our labs and touched it generating the tone.”