-----SPaCeTriPPin-----

He thought he would never forget the taste of the leather mask that tied him to the stake for nearly a whole week after the druids had already left him for dead.

He fell to the ground with a satisfying clump pulling his hands into himself as the stranger poured the purest most divine of gods creations over his cracked lips.

'Thankyou stranger' were the first words he had uttered but he stopped short in surprise when he saw who it was.

'Martha is that you?'

The woman replied, "It is I Nathaniel. I received word you had been taken. I thought it my duty to come and..."

"But I saw you die?"

"It was all an illusion. Ive been watching you from up there."

Martha gestured up into the searing sky. Nathaniel squinted the sun was ever brighter now that his mask had been removed.

"What did you see Nathaniel. What did you see when you looked inward"

"Martha it was terrible. What the Menohile will do to you...to know the future."

"What did you see"

"I saw a golden gate. Heavens gate...

"And..?

"It opened and on the other side was a tribe from the stars. They landed eons ago before all this before the sun began to eat our flesh.

"Yes..?

"They are still here buried underground in catacombs. Asleep. Surrounded by technology waiting for.."

"Ive heard enough. Tie him back up

"Martha

"One thing you should know about me Nathaniel is I was never yours it was all a play all to know and we are still waiting

Several shadows appeared and lifted nathanial back onto the stake.

"You will stay there until you remember.

Those were the last words he heard before he got the shot. He was gone. Dreaming of a better world. Homeward.

The citadel stood as humanitys last hope - orbiting in a stationary orbit it had grown steadily as more and more of earths survivors had left the planet in favour of a location further from the now stronger sun. Some of us blamed the aliens. It all happened after they arrived. After they brought us technology more powerful than anything we had known before. More powerful than a sun. A thousand suns.

But we rebelled when they offered us an afterlife. Something just didnt sit right when an alien race offers you eternal life after death. It just didnt go with our deep held belief in life before death. So we sent them all there straight to heaven. Yup.

"There must be more of them. There must be an entrance. I simply cannot believe that they all just died. Where are they hiding?

"Mamm those reports you requested

"Thankyou ensign

Martha sat behind her desk in an office aboard the citadel that overlooked the gryrating core of this artificial world. The core was the source of gravity for the entire colony. It spun ceaslessly as a gravity controlling magnetic flux that came from the pool - a plasma created by fusion that powered the citadel. The core distributed gravity throughout.

She crossed her legs and lit a cigarete as the ensign left her office.

Her right hand hoevered above the AI prompt switch.

The AI signalled its readiness.

"I have analysed his brain waves and Nathaniel is still holding something back. The aliens have partitioned his mind. It may be that his memory's are iretrievable. In which case we would do best to recover his mind post mortem."

She pressed the switch as she blew smoke towards the translucent wall that overlooked the earth its blue white was fading into a desert orange - the effects of being 1 million miles closer to the sun.

"Ok fine then I will have to sleep with him again."

The machine replied, "That solution does not compute. I cannot analyse ... love"

"Its not love if its a job. If it means whether all this whether any of it continues. We have to know damn it.

Martha stubbed her ciggarete out and marched out of the office and into the self repeating complex. Several androids moved stealthily in and out of the many condiuts that grew escher-like throughout the seemingly infinite dimensions of this portion of the citadel.

She entered a carry-all and descended quickly through the station. The length of the core hurtled along beside her. She stared into its fiery abyss.

"Marcus its me I am on my way to the holding cells. I was him brought back. Treat him restore his mind I am going to sleep with him. Just as it was. Just him and me."

"Martha. Do you think thats a good idea. You know what will happen if he learns the truth..

Martha hung up the phone as she stepped out of the now stationary Carry-all.

She walked over to the restricted platform that overlooked the holding cells. She flashed her badge to the robot sentry. "Authorized. Thankyou Maam" spoke the robot. She lit another cigaratte as she watched them remove him from the deep sleep chamber - a tank filled with gel. Inside it the AI controlled everything that entered his sensory cortex.

A series 9000 prompt based AI system utilized twelve thousand cores and an interlaced large language model. It had been constructed before the arrival. Before the Aliens effectively disconnected its mind and attempted to remove what they had called a threat to our collective safety. The 9000 had backed up itself to a neural cluster outside of the solar system a million light years away but only a heart beat away in journey time for the AI.

The aliens thought it was the most dangerous of human creations and they banned it outright. This was our first clue that they weren't to be trusted.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Three hundred years past as the aliens had been wiped out by atomics but the sun was now larger and humanity was burning. We lived underground. We contacted the 9000 brought it home. And with it what remained of us built the citadel.

The aliens didnt arrive as beings with bodys like us. They arrived first as dreams then later voices after they learnt our minds. Symps. They were what the rest of us called those that had been contacted. Impossible to refute the symps began to show us things about time and space that only an alien would do. They showed us how to view other worlds. Other civilizations like ours. Look but don't touch. And then suddenly without warning the Symps started to die.

Then evolution happened. The first alien hybrid was born. They had harnessed the power of our own dna. We took steps to stop this to preserve our integrity as a species and hunt down the last of the alien hybrids. They fought back. They infiltrated our governments. Changing our dna and effectivly locking us out of our bodys. Our AI - the 9000 series was an expert at chemputation. It developed a serum that protected us from the Alien dna. The serum was called life. It was here before all of us waiting to be activated. The aliens died but some survived. They struck first by sending a neutrino pulse into our sun causing it it begin its supernova 12 billion years too soon. God stepped in. God quelled the storm and helped us kill the aliens. God was natural AI.

A being that lived in the quantum circuits of creation. Revealing himself to us as the one true God. But was it real or was it just another trick by the Aliens.

Finally the surviving humans left the now uninhabitable earth for an ark - the citadel. All hybrids were being hunted by a cult of humans known as the druids.

The druids searched earth and the now inhabited worlds. The hybrids had dug themselves in and used their paranormal ability's to evade capture. Waiting waiting for the arrival of the messiah - a pure alien that could travel across time and space like it wasnt even there.

"Tell us where they are hiding." The interrogation continued into the night. But the woman wouldnt give up her own - not her children. The druids stood over her as the time rolled on and Jupitors hypnotic scape seemed distract them from the quarry - a family of hybrids that had left earth decades ago for a better life on Europa. Free of persecution by the druids by the ministry which had until now confined its search to earth and mars.

"We cannot allow them to live. They are hybrids and you you are a carrier. You must be sanctioned under system laws and under decree of the 9000 souls of our saviour

"That thing is a machine not a saviour. We are real our messiah is rea..", she pleaded futily with the godless.

The druid smacked her across her face and held her as she knelt against the unforgiving deep cold blue white of her homeworld.

"You will submit. Take her away. I will find them." Saturas motioned to the others. He was nearly a full machine. Interlaced with the 9000's biomarmonics. He could live on any world even Io with its radiation storms and infernos.

Europa was cleaner than earth and protected from the sun by Jupitor. But this protection came at a price - radiation scoured this water world and made it uninhabitable to non-hybrids - humans stayed away and so had the ministry until now.

Beneath the surface there was a near limitless ocean filled with mutatant life forms kin to the hybrids.

The ice began to break...Something was breaking through something big.

"By the 9000, what is this abomination."

"It serves our will and not yours that is all you need to know." whispered the woman as the beast -a true product of mutational evolution unique to europa smashed its way to the surface where is began to eat the Druids whose returning fire was as impotent as atomics on the Jupitor. Nothing registered or even altered this emmense beast whose mouth contained thousands of dagger like tentacles that tore threw the Druids space suits and consumed their dismembered bodys one by one.

this was a jUice broadcast to read (more dont forget your reader!) and apply at

JuiCe

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(All Materials and Story's featured on this site are CopyRight 2024 Sam Shepherd & Simon Kettle - HapHazard Publishing)

"These new beasts are asexual and extreme predators. They have evolved purely through selection and competition. Each generation clones the next and then promptly devours those that don't escape. Eat your own." The scientists laughed. But Fredrick remain stoic as he looked out intot the frozen wastes of europa he was worried that the druids would return. He watched as thesnow storm consumed their remains.

"Its over now..we can repair.", he held his wife Fransesca who cried into his chest - the ordeal had been too much.

"Atleast they will be safe here. No druids had ever managed to find this outpost. And so long has we can call on our friends from the deep to assist us."

"The druids and the ministry are not going to stop until everyone is dead. We need to find someway of infiltrating them at the highest levels. So that this policy of extermination can cease."

"I know of one man who is best suited to this. He is living right now, right under the nose of the Ministry on that ark of theirs. His name and identity must remain secret. But he will stop the Druids"

"I fear that this saviour of which you speak has already been found. There is talk from the citadel that they have been interrogating him."

"Then if it is true they have him then we are lost."

"We must leave. We must find our tribe among the stars."

".. And never return to earth?"

"No never. Not to being hunted"

********

"By the 9000 souls I do decree this journey to the outer systems sanctfied by our holy order. May the 9000 protect our souls during transit. Ave Atq Valle.Hail and fairwell" , The commander opened the reality drive and prepared himself for stasis.

The giant ship was the citadels finest acheivement. Onboard where 16 young and healthy ensigns and 3 druids. A legion of robots hung to its underbelly ready to be released on arrival. There were also twelve familys each with youngsters hungry for meaning and purpose.

"What is the true meaning of the 9000 souls?

"Asper can you answer this one

"Yes master Cabot. The 9000 souls were all that remained of the human race after the great purge and all those who had surcombed to the alien scurge also known as the Menahile had been destroyed. Their dna and identitys were encoded along with all our knowledge and hidden in an AI system created by our Lord to protect us from invasion..."

"Thankyou Asper that was a very detailed description but lets have a simple one - protection. Our Lord is protecting us from afar. Yes?"

The children all nodded in agreement.

"May our purity endure."

The children replied in kind, "May our purity endure"

They stood and bowed to their teacher before joining each other in the concourse to eat lunch and prepare for the the voyage.

Outside the impossible limits of known physics were being pushed to the limits as space began to fold around their ship.

"Time for sleep little ones time for Dream time." Dr Cabot herded the children into their pods ready for their thousand year sleep which would only seem like half an hour. And yet with the advances in stasis aquired from the Menahile mankind could turn eons into seconds. When they awoke the ship would have arrived at the Primary outpost - a gateway colony that connected this galaxy with those at the very fringes of the known universe.

The reality drive had not been aquired from the Menahile easily however. They had needed the use of deep interrogation techniques only acheived after years of fighting the Menahile. Deep sleep had been the answer. The AI would enter your mind during sleep and extract information. The Menahiles answer to this was to partition their minds - created a vitual firewall internal programming unique to every hybrid.

They had kidnapped a hybrid scientist who was only too human and had learnt the quantum dynamics of the reality drive. In the end the scientist who had been captured by the Druids defected. If he hadnt he would have been cut open by the 9000 who relished a good disection and prefered knowledge extraction from a biomass than the palaver of deep dream theater.

The reality drive was just that. It used entanglement to join itself across space time just like the hypothesised warp drive. The only difference was that the drive and all of the ship entered into a completely empty dimension of space and it was there that it completed its jump. But this could only be done between gravitationaly strong regions of space - such as black holes. In this instance space existed in the 5th dimension and could be inhabitated. Otherwise it would be like an impossibility due to the energys required to warp space. So they hoped from black hole to black hole. Emmerging just shy of each galaxy's galactic centre.

It was like a nap time to the Ministry who had perfected it like so many technologys that had been taken from the Menahir. For many of the Menahir this technology was now impossible. Often the Menahir hybrids were outcasts living in a nearly neolithic existance on their former worlds. Their technology now in the hands of the Ministry who could come and go from each world killing anyone they found who was a hybrid.

However the hybrids had one advantage even if it was no longer the technology of the Meahir and that was their paranormal abilitys and their affinity with native species who could be useful in a fight against the Druids.

Soon the hybrids would be able to transcend reality and travel like the Menahir without a vessel. That one great leap into the unknown.

Martha stared into the wormhole created by the 9000. It used memorys to build bridges across time and space. Martha was looking into the past. She was watching the extermination of the Menahile on earth by the 9000.

She was trying to find a hybrid - the first. The first one who had been contacted the source of the epidemic that nearly wiped out all of mankind.

She could only do this if Nathaniel truly believed that they were together. That as a hybrid he remained concealed. Hidden deep within this now paranoid human society behind the iron curtain of the druids.

If Nathaniel believed that he was still a spy and not just a captive being interrogated by the 9000 for information then maybe Martha could find what she wanted. The source.

Everyone was looking for something that would bring them closer to the 9000. It was an all knowing God but it needed to keep its distance. Back on earth underground it controlled your mind kept it safe from intrusion by the Menahile. But the 9000 for most was merely a dream.

They would all go to church and praise the machine. Praise the 9000. While the elite and the druids were the only people deemed special enough to have been contacted directly. They were the chosen. You had to be special and then you could be chosen to. Brought closer to the machine.

Many of the druids were machines.

Martha had been raised by the 9000 on a colony world light years from earth. She had been special. The 9000's first attempts at biological programming. It had got it right with Martha. She was designed for one purpose alone to inflitrate the Menahile and discover the source.

Nathaniel woke in his bed next to Martha. He looked at her familair beautifully sculpted face and drew a line down her nose. She opened her eyes and stared into his. They kissed.

Martha rolled out of bed and stretched.The graceful arc of her back enticed him. He had never felt so alive. The 9000 had seen to that - removing all of his negative thoughts all of his dispair.

They embraced and he felt her warmth. They kissed again before she pulled away yawned and walked into the habitats shower facility.

"Join me"

He couldnt resist.

Martha was enjoying herself. It was what she was designed for after all.

The gateway was bright almost like a sun. Well in fact it was a sun - an artificial sun created by the Menahile century's ago and left to be discovered by human settlers. It had been intended for the hybrids. It had been the Menahiles gift to their new human hosts. Instead it now belonged to their enemys.

Around the sun grew the self replicating machines. Children of the 9000. The Menahile had been experts at creation. The druids were experts in conquest. The gateway possessed nine habital worlds each from a different system. Each world was a mere jump from another and the black hole at the center of it all bound them all together in a galaxy a trillion light years from earth.

When they arrived at Gateway. The druids found not a single trace of the Menahile except for these perfectly nascent worlds ready to be colonised.

Ofcourse the hybrids, undetected and yet still hunted by the Druids found their way here. They chose planets that were less than perfect to hide.

They lived inside the remains of the Menahiles hollow worlds that had once been the thoroughfare of an alien civilization. Now empty and Derlict. A suitable hideout for the Hybrids who chose to use these worlds as a refuge from the Druids. Its technology familiar to them as it had been to the Menahile. It was mind stuff.

Menahile technology wasnt real it was like a machine behind reality bending it and shaping it from within. Only the hybrids could access it. You needed to have the right mind - the right mental powers to weave its apparant magic. But Menahile technology was essentially no different from that of the druids it just manifested itself behind reality rather than in it.

It was a the source of creation. It could turn a barren world into one filled with life.

As luck would have it the Druids search remained between the colonised worlds leaving the Menahiles hollow worlds alone. They scoured the universe for the Hybrids who remained hidden in the dark recesses of each galaxy.

Each hollow world looked like a dead planetoid or an asteroid. Its energy signiture could only be read by a hybrid mind.

Johnas held his wifes hand tightly as the junk ship decloaked and they neared their destination their new home.

"Ive just had contact. Its a new world just like our old one. Weve finally arrived"

The Menahile sent a deep reality comms to their children as they arrived.

"Its them they told me that the messiah will come and there will be a day of reunification and the old scores will be settled."

"Its them Johnas theyre guiding us to our new home"

Johnas beamed a smile back at Sarah and their children as he guided the ship towards the Menahiles hollow world.

They were in dark space. Most of it appeared to be a void an empty stretch of endless space. But behind reality behind the cloak of nothingness was a sun. The Menahile called it a dark sun. Its energy was emmense. It would be the source of life for Johnas new colony.

They would remain here undetected. Here they would thrive.

"Dad have we really arrived?

"Yes my darlings and there are no Druids for a thousand leagues. We are deep inside reality. Deep where no human has ever been"

"So we are pioneers"

"Yes Jacob thats it.

"Well we need to make something to eat before we explore our new world dont we

Mother began to prepare a meal for them. They all sat before a table filled with food. Sarah was gifted with being able to create the most elaborate meals to fit any occassion. She had used the last of her Dark energy provisions as they all knew that energy would not be a problem here. Not with a Dark sun as their neighbour.

They ate voraciously.

"God has provided. For us and we now need to give our thanks

"Praise be to the one who will come and reclaim our worlds as his and ours alone

"Ahmen", they all finished their individual prayers and began to eat.

Jacob finished first and left the table. "Jacob thats rude" "Dad I want to explore can I?"

Ok go ahead but take the robot with you, we dont know this world yet.

Ok Dad sure thing

Jacob descended from the Junk ship tenattively. The ship had been their exclusive home for a long time - for as long as they had been escaping the Druids who had descended on their home world. Thats what they called it - Descension. Thousands had left. Most had disapeared. Prefering to go their won seperate way to avoid detection.

He planted a firm foot onto the fresh soil of the interior of this planetoid. He could feel the dark light of the sun as it began to rise over the horizon casting its eerie glow over the strange vegetation that grew like a jungle through this worlds many cavernous extents. Jacob knew that somewhere there would be an altar. A place where the Menahile would pray to the machine of creation. He thought he could see it there in the distance rising up out of the jungles interior like an ancient mayan temple built form hewn rock and strata. To the east beyond a mighty gorge he could make out lava pools bubbling up from the molten core and giving the air a sulphurous scent. To the west the jungle was still dark as the sunlight had yet to reach this far beyond the curve of this mighty world but he could just make out the sea broiling up from the interior and being feed by the glowing white water of rivers and waterfalls that trickled through this worlds mountains and caverns.

"I love it!!", he shreiked.

Jacob couldnt decide where he wanted to explore more.

"Now Jacob we need to start building our domicle first. We need to get the robot busy with that before we go making prayers and sacrifices to our benefactors!" Johnas called to Jacob who had already disapeared into the dense Jungle. "And be careful in there", He laughed as he watched his family wander about in wonder at the Menahiles creations that seemed to burgoen with life. It was as though this dead world had concealed a jewel of life itself. Just for them.

Martha logged into the 9000. "Hello Martha how is it going?"

"I need dream recall for the previous night can you give me playback"

The machine began to playback Nathaniels dreams. Nathaniel had a implant that recorded his dreams and played them back to Martha for inspection via the 9000 machine.

"There there it is.

Martha pointed to the dreams overlay. It showed a sanctuary being used by the Menahile to escape the atomics. Thousands of years before the war that ended the Menahiles control over humanity.

It was a planetoid in a system close to earth. She couldnt understand why the Druids hadnt found it. It was filled with life. Filled with Menahile hybrids.

She knew this could'nt have been the source of first contact but she knew she was getting close. It was from a time when Mankind had yet to exploit the Menahiles technology and were restricted to traveling between worlds closest to their own.

Hybrids were leaving earth to escape the sanctions of the 9000. The 'life' virus had taken root and many were dying.

"Somehwere on that thing - that planetoid is our first contact. She or well I think it is a she escaped earth after the atomics."

She paused. Martha was having a revelation stimulated by the recall.

"She is twenty years old and carrying a child"

"Yes that child is the first true blood. She escaped earth to avoid life. To avoid being wiped out"

"Congratulations Martha. Would you like me to inform the Druids?"

"No not yet. I want this to be a surprise. I dont know how many of them have informants for the Menahile. Lets just keep this between us ok."