Everyone slept while they walked through the night. Sweeping up souls and collecting dreams as they went and returning it all to the Institute - to be recorded ,understood and interpreted but most of all to being incorporated into the Holy record. A peace book that only the grand patriach and the grand master could read. The institutes dream collectors were tasked with visiting all of Myztons colonys on which humans thrived in complete ignorance of their 'obedience' -a term the institute used to refer to those that had been collected for harvesting. It was a nutritional requirement of Myztonians - neural energy of other species, food was mere sustanance. Dreams however would allow them to transcend reality and move effortlessly between worlds across the giant endless seam's of dark matter that spun like an invisible weave throughout the universe.
They controlled them through their dreams. Reassured them that everything was normal. Meanwhile their homeworlds were being converted. Terraformed - made livible by the Myztonians.
They dreamt of their former lives while they lived to serve the empire - building battle ships, sky lifts, gateways and space cruisers all powered by their own neural energy via the nexus that lay at the heart of it all. The holy record. Ofcourse most of the real work had to be done by machines and in fact humans had it easy in the Myzton colonys. They never ever met their masters - the Myztons who existed only in the ethereal plane facilitated by their human slaves.
The humans thought that everything they did was for the betterment of humankind. Nothing had changed for so long and nobody thought to challenge the empire with a head that was as ellusive as their own dreams and origins.
The crawlers on earth were being harvested. Toby was in charge. Several ministerial agents who were doped to the nines wore the Myztonian issue rubber suits while their head sockets kept them unquestioningly obedient.
"Hows it going down there?", it was Justine.
"Good weve loaded most of the crawlers", Toby was entering his crawler stats into the log.
"What about the resistence?"
"Weve got most of them on the satellite array and we are tracking them. Just waiting for them to make a move or clump together so we can zap them"
"Zap them"
"Yes we have that now. Its a ministry standard issue zapper"
Toby looked pleased. Almost extatic. He'd been helping himself to the Myzton drugs.
The ministry had taken a while - convertion and obedience always took time. Mutation, convertion, denial and then finally oedience. It took a while not everyone would succomb to the changes. Most would remain crawlers. Crawlers were just harvested and loaded for the colonys. Erasure and then released for allocation to the colonys and harvesting.
Green goo dribbled from the trodes on Tobys 2nd leutenant as he delivered the crawler stats he smile gratiously through his rubber suit and black goggles. His stubbly unshaven mouth seemed to quiver.
"Thankyou sir", he stood to attention as did several of Tobys immediate division guard all drooling from narcolepsy and involuntary body spasms. They were already recieving the muscle stimulants and anyone of them could crush a rhino with the correct neural impulse from Tobys little black box.
"Ohh thats really good he will be very pleased with that well done No. 2"
The first of the crawler ships began to disembark from earth systems space as they entered a dark space conduit Amber Jones began to adjust his telescope. "Theyre up there. We need to act now if we are going to save our entire way of life." , he glanced back at his team. A rag bag group of anarchists, flat earthers, and denialists. All of them had dismissed the PM's address. They had all blocked out the powerful hypnotic waves being sent across most terrestrial TV advertising and when the government started lacing the water supply they just carried on drinking rain water.Die hard survivalists everyone.
Jones smiled. "We can beat them"
Read 'The Professor' -:-
"The bumbling professor is back. Who on every adventure only just manages to escape complete oblivion by chance and when he actually puts his mind to it can only seem to overcome the most benial of enemys. Read as he takes on the entire universe, despotic queens, maniacle visirs and hungry goblins triumpthing every adversary in his path with sheer luck, good manners and the invaluable assistance of his cherished companion Thomlinson.
Hey Professor!
Don't forget your jar of lucky worms!!"
Read a Sample Here
(All Materials and Story's featured on this site are CopyRight 2024 Sam Shepherd & Simon Kettle - HapHazard Publishing)