Nobody goes to Nova -:- Jacobs Story

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The beetle bugs where back again they swarmed over us trying to bite their way into our armour but it was too strong even for their metal tipped pincers to penetrate. They relented as the swarm withdrew from us in pursuit of something less well armoured - a passed driver. Drivers were autonmous evolved and germinated here on Nova the fifth planet in the Gerus system founded by our leader Thalamus the third. The driver was over whelmed. Pulios - my father thought about letting the space flies he kept inside his registered driver go and retrieve the stricken driver. But in the end he decided it would be a waste of flies and we just watched as the beetles ate the driver. If AI could feel pain then it was evidentiated here in front of us. Nature was cruel even the artificial kind.

"Well Jacob thats evolution - you see what I was telling you. We need it just as much as it needs us."

Pulios slapped his suits armoured shassi as he gazed knowingly at me.

"We havent long before they send the collectors and i'd reall rather we made it home under our own steam."

I agreed, for once I really did think that my father's ideas were for the best. We were trying to be different than the rest to reach further by staying just that much more beyond the safety of the tunnels that conatined most of our people. Well we were more machine than human but you get the idea.

Out here in the forbidden zone we would be food for worms if it hadnt been for Pulios survival guide - written by non other than the great Thalamus himself.Or so we were led to believe. A little known works which by now had been subjected to safety criteria making its online version more like a home cookery class than a guide to human-machine survival on an alien world.

It is thought that Thalamus first wrote the guide after reading his great great grandfathers diarys in the early days of the colony's but that was only heresay. As history - which is my current interest is selectively reported from a thousand years ago to exactly 200 years before today. Within that 200 year span absolutely anything could have happened but as far as we knew, it was just boring old everyday stuff. Pulios knew otherwise and was trying to eductate me, his only son, on the truth that was so evidently being concealed by the powers in charge. The powers in charge were essentially just machines with brain they were the Brunhiga. Named after their creator a one Gertrude Brunhigan from east Texas. She had created a real AI back in the 5th centruy After the singularity or after real AI had been discovered and promptly surpressed for another 5 century's.

In that 200 years empires rose and fell and it was that simple fact that the powerful had concealed from us in order to keep everyone happy and doped up on the right neuraleptic propoganda or advertising. Well thats why I skipped school. I had grown tired of being constantly fed what my Dad reffered to as advertisements. He said that before the empires of Thalumus the colonys had been built on this - advertising. I still don't understand.

We continued on and reached the edge of our homesteads crator. It was an artifical crator made about a thousand years ago when our ancestors first arrived in this system - most likely from terra or some other system that we unfortunately still don't know about. Suffice to say that it must have taken them a long time to get here because it isnt in our 2000 year history books.

We looked at the view over our crator and into the sun as it set across our homeworld.

Our world was a lovely indigo and covered with peaks and troughs just like the one we had climbed to get here. In between each nearly vertical peaks there grew purple plankton feeding off the bacteria that thrived in our thick yet deadly atmos. The sun was pearly white and the sky was a kind of bright and frothy black which was saturated in this airborne bacteria. It literally ate anything except that which consumed it. Thats why we wore our suits and lived underground for the most part. If we had remained out here for more than a week the bacteria would have degraded our suits.

My mother called it rust. I am not sure where she got that name from but any how it was red when it ate you and black when it didn't. My dad believes that the bacteria was actually man made and rebelled against its creator become self aware - giving rise to other creations that were also evolved from these humble beginings. Our world - Nova was actually once filled with life like us composed of flesh and not machine. However my dad is nearly a century old and is mostly machine. My grandad who lives inside the walls in our home says that he is talking bs and that when he was little there was a computer virus that fried his circuits. We all laughed at that one.

The empire that rose was that of Thalamus the 1st and he was the first human created on Nova by machines. Well he might have been the second or the third but hell who knows. He became the supreme leader and then it becomes sketchy about what he did as most of the knowledge is surpressed and replace by a steady stream of advertisements about health, wellbeing prosperity and well advertising. Advertising about advertising which is inturn about getting a job in yes thats right you got it advertising. The machines were devoted to the cause of advertising everything subliminally in our dreams. Some of us - my Dad for one learnt to control our dreams and instead of advertising streams we enjoyed family get togethers. My Grandad and his Grandad would all go on fishing trips and we used the VR that the overseers used to advertise to us. It was a high qaulity data stream and boy it didnt come cheap. My dad had to pay for our dreams and he spent most of his life working in the mines to pay for it.

Everyone had to pay for their dreams but hey we were lucky atleast we didnt have to pay for our thoughts. Some of the other kids in class had been talking about getting offworld and building a new life on another system. But most of us knew that we would need alot of credit to buy our own minds back when we arrived. Everyone knew that offworld thinking wasnt free. You needed a new body or a new mind and that meant bandwidth either way you played it. This was the better life right here on Nova. I relished looking forward to going hiking with my Dad. Waiting for him to download from the mines. All of us my Mum and my baby sister Agatha all waited for Dad to download after a long haul in the mines. The mine were dangerous some where off world and the radiation combined with the distance meant that a download just was not possible. For example if the mine was on a moon that orbited a gas giant then invariably there would be a narrow window for download. Incomplete downloads were the worst - it was like getting your Dad back without his mind working properly. He'd could be a vegtable or worse a tyrant. But the second window would come around and we would be back to good old Dad again. "Go for hike??" "Yeah sure Dad"