I awoke with a sudden, intense sense of unease in my chest, accompanied by excruciating pain, and I coughed up blood.
“Ugh…”
“Nozomu!!”
[ Incredible! He really came back to life/from the underworld/!!!! We owe our gratitude to the Great Mother’s blessings!! ]
[ Master!/God’s turn!/Protector!! Rejoice, slumbering deity!! ]
Before I knew it, I was lying on my back, and in front of me, Galatea was tearing up, her hand on my chest. Around us, Tech Gobs and Sylvanians were in an uproar.
Ah, I see. All my bodily functions temporarily shut down to reboot, which made it look like I was dead. They must have been following revival procedures then.
My body doesn’t die from just ten minutes without breath, you know. It’s said that brain function completely deteriorates from lack of oxygen in about eight minutes after cardiac arrest, but I have no brain cells.
Instead, I possess a photonic crystal that’s a transcription of my self-awareness—data integrating all my former neural circuits converted into binary. Unless my skull is shattered and this crystal destroyed, I won’t die from something as trivial as lack of breath or blood.
“You… you’re alive! Blood was pooling in your mouth, and you weren’t breathing…”
Ah, old human standards saw it as a life-threatening situation, but I deeply apologize for causing such panic.
“Thank you, Galatea… but I don’t die this easily.”
“You should still rest!!”
“I’m fine.”
Ugh, moving hurts like hell. Did a professional soldier go all out on me? My sternum and ribs seem shattered judging by this pain. While enduring it, I reached for an injector of body activation serum—Galatea had an “Is that what you were hiding!?” look for a moment—and I opened my jumpsuit collar to inject it.
The fractures and damaged organs will repair themselves in around three minutes if I stay still.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. It appears T. Osamu’s blessings were strong indeed.”
“Good morning, and sorry for the worry, Selene. And to clarify, my main reverence is to the Holy R. A. Heinlein.”
As I caught my breath, a communication came through. Selene had clearly been worried, immediately starting a full detailed scan of the system logs remotely.
She’s deeply concerned whether I’m still, well, me.
It’s fine; only the outermost defenses were breached. It’s like a carefully wrapped egg that merely had its surface touched. Besides, we’ve scrubbed it clean of contaminants, so meticulously treating it like an infant is a bit embarrassing.
“All systems green, Lieutenant. The damaged defenses have been reconstructed.”
“Thanks. But we were lucky.”
Had this “Corrupted Male Deity” fully hijacked Tiamat 25 and turned the onboard integrated ship-commanding quantum intelligence into a rogue code-spewing computer, we’d have lost.
Particularly on larger ships where sometimes three to four are onboard instead of the usual single AI, it was lucky the adversary lacked the wits to utilize that.
“By the way, what happened to the Corrupted Male Deity…”
“It appears when I extracted his code, he convulsed…”
Looking over, the fleshy tumor-like mass still clinging to the captain’s chair had turned into a blue, congested lump of silence.
It seems it relied on the “Great Mother” for bodily maintenance, and when shutdown ejected it, disrupting its homeostatic processes.
Dammit, it’s clearly defunct at a glance since I didn’t dare access it due to its danger, but this was something I wanted to thoroughly deconstruct with dedicated analysis equipment once Tiamat 25 was recovered.
If only the consciousness had been fully transferred into a photonic crystal. But now, that won’t happen. I’ll inspect the skull out of caution, but I expect to find nothing substantial.
…Unless, did he deliberately take this form to safeguard information during potential damage? Though embodying this vulnerability prevents hacking if captured, there’s a trade-off.
So, the creator of this entity anticipated all this.
Damn, this overly shy guy. When I find who made you, I’ll punch you for sure.
After peeling off the fleshy mass, the seat was surprisingly clean. Likely, microscopic mechanisms protected its surface, metabolizing old scales into nutrients again—a common tactic among those who retained obsolete human bodies even after advancing into space.
[Warrrior, what are you doing?]
Ridelberdy approached me as I sat in the captain’s seat, seemingly concerned about what I might do to their holy deity.
[“Awaken the Great Mother.”]
Just restarting Tiamat 25 after putting it to sleep. Honestly, if we don’t reactivate the anti-gravity systems soon, we might collapse anytime.
[Eyewitness! The Great Mother’s grace!! During my lifetime!]
After cleaning the main port previously connected to the mass, I attached the terminal from my neck.
I had a hunch, from the forced shutdown sensation, that there were no survivors left. The ship’s data was mostly wiped in a desperate attempt to prevent leaks, leaving only pre-installed OSs and fragmentary logs akin to “farewell letters.”
The ship only had one mechanized human and several quantum AIs. The AIs snapped during initial communications interference, taking the ship’s controls with them. The human survivor, struggling with remnants of sanity, managed to guide the falling ship vertically, activating the main thrusters to mitigate the damage before succumbing to madness.
Their names: Lieutenant Colonel Tera Moto Kouichiro and Albert 24650. May their souls be guided to rest among the Holy Triumvirate.
“Amazing, both the main and auxiliary cores are still alive! Lieutenant Colonel Tera Moto seemingly triggered protective processes and rerouted the ship’s system into maintenance mode!”
“That seems to be the case. Most facilities and the factory’s functionally dead, but there were numerous microscopic machines keeping them from decay. We owe thanks to the Colonel’s efforts.”
Let’s awaken “The Great Mother” for further investigation.
“Initiating startup process. Authentication code… good, it passed.”
“OS booting. Initial settings beginning, progress 12%, 45%, 89%… 100%.”
Honestly, this moment is always the scariest. Rebooting old machinery—turning off the power could easily be “the final blow,” and you end up fiddling with trepidation.
Come on, come on, show us the pride of the higher-tier manufactures…!
Awakening the dormant control systems, we converted as much of the corrupted hex code into binary as possible. We’re just an observation station’s crew—I have an external operations insignia, but I’m no “shipwright,” so we can’t restore it to its former pristine state.
Still, we can patch up and restart what’s broken.
“Auxiliary core online. Fusion reaction confirmed. Starting the main engine’s warm-up.”
“Still on planet, a 15% output should suffice. Tighten it as much as possible.”
“Understood. Main core, ‘Primary Core,’ entering critical state. Simultaneously reactivating the anti-gravity unit.”
The unsettling fetal vibration I’d felt upon entry resumed.
But this time, fully controlled by the reawakened core, it’s a weak, steady vibration, almost like peaceful breathing.
“Tiamat 25, reboot complete.”
“Alright!!”
The Tech Gobs were in tearful, wild celebration upon learning that “the Great Mother” had awakened properly.
Naturally so, having endured two centuries without their sacred presence, not to mention the dread of it being profaned and spawning monsters.
Not only did they solve it in their generation, but they’ve retrieved the Great Mother. Their joy should be boundless.
[Glory to the Great Mother!!]
[Give thanks to the Mother of Compassion!!]
[Yes! The holy spear warrior has done it! Eternal honor to his name!!]
Embarrassing accolades aside, I began diligently checking the reactivated ship.
The Great Mother—or Tiamat 25—is a medium-class factory ship capable of restoring a starcraft if so inclined, but much of its units were wrecked beyond repair from the impact.
The only active sections are the prosthesis parts production, basic expendables production, and the general manufacturing facilities—but most were converted into “bio-unit” production facilities.
“What is this… a cultivation tank…?”
“Upper logs suggest it was used for creating abominations. Upper? Wait, Captain, here are some intact log records and official files.”
What? Before I could ask, Selene had already begun piecing together fragmented data into meaningful records for us to understand.
We see it now—observation data suggesting Earth-like planetary changes persisted even after the “comm-banding” incident. Likely, the ship’s passive sensors remained active, idly gathering information.
“Hmm… so, the communication band contamination was intentional, and they continued Earth-like changes through it?”
“It doesn’t seem like mere terrorism. While we have many enemies among the higher-tier civilizations, we lack the need for such roundabout schemes.”
I hesitate to say this but… among the high-tier civilizations, we have more adversaries than allies or friends. Our existence often bewilders other civilizations, and we don’t even get on well with baseline humanity.
We had thought at first that the hostile civilization might have attacked the seeding fleet as some form of sabotage, but this doesn’t fit.
It wouldn’t serve any purpose to terraform the planet merely to interfere with the higher-tier civilization’s large economic activities. And besides, what are the odds of producing Tech Gobs by altering production facilities?
They are not aberrations accidentally produced by a malfunctioning Tiamat 25.
Instead, they are a new form of humanity intentionally created and proliferated throughout the planet by someone.
This certainty comes from the design specifications for the Tech Gobs found in the logs of these manufacturing facilities.
Likely, the Sylvanians were also manufactured somewhere by someone with their genome data stored here alongside the templates of designed animals that were popular and banned due to excessive intelligence long ago.
So, the planetary terraforming was deliberate, not coincidental. The seeding of new sentient beings also wasn’t random but carried out with intent and purpose.
“What is it, Nozomu?”
“Nothing.”
One question remains unresolved.
If the creators sought simply to play gods and create new humans, why create so many different types with such varied specifications?
The Sylvanians, the Tech Gobs, the old humans living in the Canopy Holy Capital—even with their sub-brains, they’re significantly different in shape, and their cultural and technological development levels vary dramatically.
It’s much like the many-species worlds of the fantasy VR games I adored.
In such worlds, there’s usually a polytheistic aspect where each deity creates vastly different humans, thus making it understandable.
But considering that this is the work of people who wanted to play god, the “worldview” is inconsistent.
The idyllic Sylvanians, the semi-mechanized Tech Gobs using sacred spears through prayer, and the old humans born with sub-brains—it all seems haphazard, akin to a shared universe where creators have no unified direction.
Moreover, using a real planet for a game of creating worlds seems excessive.
If they merely wanted to play god, they didn’t need to provoke higher-tier civilizations unnecessarily when a virtual space could be easily created. In fact, the vast digital universe already had countless VR creations made by enthusiasts.
“It’s not a harmonious relationship, is it?”
Additionally, this “Corrupted Male Deity.” It’s too clearly something designed solely to harm the Tech Gobs, making no sense at all.
Perhaps the group responsible for the terraforming had a falling out?
All we can do for now is theorize.
However, there has been progress.
The massacre against us and the planetary terraforming were carried out in tandem, and the creation of humanity had a purpose.
Although we cannot yet define that purpose, retrieving “The Great Mother” represents a significant advancement in planetary exploration…
Always appreciate feedback and typo corrections. It truly motivates me greatly.
We plan an update for July 19, 2024, around 18:00. Thank you for your continued support!
