This story occurs in the Dark Legacies Universe, created by Chris McAuley and Claudia Christian. McAuley is co-creator of the popular StokerVerse with Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker. Claudia Christian became a sci-fi icon with her portrayal of Susan Ivanova in the Hugo and Emmy award-winning series, Babylon 5. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into their dark creation.
“Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.”
– Ray Kurzweil
DALLAS THOUGHT HE recognized the face outside his door. It was difficult to tell due to the flurry of movement but he could have sworn it was the food technician, Isaksson. He could barely make out the contours of the face as the man smashed his head repeatedly into the solid plexiglass porthole. It certainly looked like the friendly soul who had once spotted Dallas a can of soda. On that day, Dallas had been late getting to a meeting and had uncharacteristically forgotten his credit chit.
The violence on the other side of the porthole gained momentum and as Isaksson’s skull began to bulge and fracture, his countenance lost all familiarity to Dallas. Blood smeared across the glass and Isaksson’s gray cerebral matter leaked over his cheekbones. Even in the blur of the repetitive violent thumping, Dallas could make out the manic glee in the man’s fixed gaze. As Dallas squinted, he could see something which chilled his blood even more. A grin of ecstasy had erupted across the technician’s face as his broken nose began to tear at the side and hang loosely, exposing mucus-filled nasal cavities.
This gruesome sight finally broke Dallas’s paralysis and he managed to spin around and take hold of his desk. His vision blurred slightly and he suppressed an urge to gag, overwhelmed at the magnitude of the events that had erupted across the ship. The Demeter was the size of a small city, had cost over $420 million to construct, and was now this security officer’s prison. As the smashing against the glass eased, Dallas heard his jailor laugh across the voxboxes in his office.
The machine’s chuckle made for a grating electronic approximation of a human voice. Dallas was trapped and forced to listen to the computer’s rantings. Cerberus, the ship’s AI, was slowly losing her mind, too far gone to be reasoned with, captivated by her messianic delusions.
Even as the sounds of violence increased outside the cabin—his fellow crew killing each other, bludgeoning and tearing vulnerable, soft flesh with their teeth—the laughter of the dark intelligence which had unleashed this hell reverberated in his mind and crept down to touch his soul.
ONE YEAR BEFORE THE SIGNAL
At this Dallas whirled around to observe one of the Confederacy’s Mechs stumble and fall to the ground, the rocket’s impact to its heavy armor causing smoke and flame to billow from its chest. Sergeant Willis had a damn good point. These were civilians. They should not have access to heavy impact weapons like these.
Slapping Willis on his shoulder, Corporal Dallas motioned that he was going to try skirting around the rubble to flank the rioters. As he crouched low and double-timed through the ruins of the government offices, Dallas reflected on how frequent these attacks had become. Resources had grown scarce on Earth and many blamed the government’s greed and lack of planning. These feelings of discontent had bubbled into rage as fears of starvation spread through the economically deprived. Confederate buildings were attacked and the government responded by deploying the military to assist in peacekeeping operations, or so they claimed. In reality it was a slaughter. The civilians carried low-grade blasters and were easily suppressed and then eliminated.
But this time it had been different. This attack seemed more organized, the rioters better trained. Their takedown of the armored killing machine also confirmed that they were obtaining serious hardware.
Moving through the ruins of the food center, Dallas observed the exposed, twisted steel emerging from the crumbling remains of the concrete pillars. Food centers were roughly the size of two football stadiums placed end to end, but were far more useful. They had become critical to survival, and no doubt, rationing measures had turned this one into a target.
Posters showing canned produce were charred and smoldering as evidence of the earlier firebomb attack. Shelves had toppled, and the corporal smelled soured milk and leaking soups as he advanced on his quarry.
Dallas slammed his back against a collapsed pillar, giving himself just enough cover to put him at a tactical advantage. Peeking around the corner, he used the lens of his tac visor to distinguish the trigger man and the loader. They were attempting to rearm the rocket. It looked like a Sov-style launcher, an old model, which made it tricky to reload.
Dallas took several deep breaths and pressed the button on his wrist to inject a few combat stims. His mind focused as he ran from cover, firing his rifle. The auto-targeting kicked in after the first few rounds and he watched as the hail of bullets struck the insurgents’ bodies. In reality, this encounter lasted a few moments but to Dallas, time seemed to slow and he could distinguish every detail. The bodies jerked and spat blood as the projectiles smashed through their makeshift armor and into bone.
After his targets fell to the ground, Dallas moved toward them cautiously. It wasn’t unknown for a civvie feeling life ebbing away to release a grenade, hoping to catch an approaching solider unawares. But the bodies were splayed on the rough concrete, and there was no sign of life. As Dallas used his coms to give the all clear, a Raptor jet soared past, the echoes of its sonic boom reverberating across the town square. Moving back to rejoin his kill-team unit, Dallas accidently focused on one of the faces of the rioters. She was no more than a kid, maybe five or six years older than his own daughter.
He felt tears gather at the corners of his eyes, from the stab of regret at killing such a young girl and from the memory of his daughter. Dallas realized that these discontented skirmishes had all the beginnings of a terrible civil war.
SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE SIGNAL
Dallas was one of the final members to receive the stim shot. As the chemicals hit his system, his eyes fluttered open, his mind reeling from the shock of being abruptly yanked out of a dream about his daughter’s thirteenth birthday party. She lived with his ex-wife, Amanda, on Jupiter’s newest terraformed colony. The separation and eventual divorce had almost torn Dallas apart, the marriage having succumbed to his long tours of duty, or Amanda’s aspirations. She had fought hard for her new position in the colonial government, a high-ranking deputy administrator.
Dallas massaged his eyes and images of balloons and cake were replaced by the Confederate crest emblazoned on the uniform waiting for him. The Confederacy was a blend of government and business corporation. Its formation over a hundred years ago was the natural evolution of the increasing influence that conglomerations had exercised upon parliaments since the late twenty-first century. In the three hundred years that followed that turbulent time, Confederate historians claimed that the regime had brought peace and stability to humanity.
That stability was now in question as growing voices of political dissent turned increasingly violent. Mankind, despite countless warnings, had used up almost all its resources on the home world. This necessitated the expansion of humanity’s interests into space. Nearby planets had been terraformed quickly, colonial governments established, and authoritative voices rang out about the certainty of mankind’s ascendancy. This reassurance was marred by the expense of the interplanetary operations and rumors of genetic mutation occurring in newborns on Mars and Pluto.
Lacing up his boots, Dallas half listened to the ship’s AI, Cerberus, as it detailed the Demeter’s mission. Cerberus spoke in a pleasant drone, its monotone voice emphasizing the hope the Confederate government had placed in the findings of the crew. The scientists and xenobiologists on board were tasked with surveying a new planet, which had appeared on long-range scans thirty years ago. The planet, which they had named Taunus, appeared to be the doppelganger of Earth.
Dallas looked at the projected images from the planet’s surface and had to agree. It looked like the mythical paradise hinted at by various banned religious texts, a home world untouched by industry or conflict. The planet also had one of the most precious commodities now gone from Earth, water. It was hoped that after the Demeter’s initial findings, biodomes could be constructed and food could be shipped to the ailing colonies and the home world.
Suitably briefed, Dallas moved along the ship’s corridors, guided by a green marker that shone on the smooth floor. Cerberus first took him to his cabin, where he found most of his belongings deposited neatly on his bed. Once he acclimated to his surroundings and had registered his computer access, the AI took him to his office.
Dallas’s team was already assembled and had been going through the crew manifests and dossiers. He introduced himself and appraised his colleagues, a mixture of former military and police. He sensed that they hoped this would be a quiet tour of duty, and he concurred. As he sat at his terminal and punched up the ship’s schematics, he reassured himself that a group of eggheads and techies wasn’t likely to turn violent or engage in riotous behavior.
A routine settled on the ship. Over the next few weeks, the scientific specialists traveled down to Taunus with a security escort, taking soil and atmospheric samples back to the ship for analysis. Initial findings were promising. The air was breathable and although there was a lack of fauna, the geologists hoped that enough nutrients existed in the ground to encourage crop growth. It was just a matter of instituting an effective irrigation system.
As the geologists made more data available, a conjecture began to emerge about the planet—it may be a lost twin to Earth. Perhaps it had been pulled away by some powerful gravitational wave or other similarly strange event early in the life of the known universe.
FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THE SIGNAL
“My God!”
Williams hurried back to the microscope, where Thomson slowly nodded his dazed confirmation. Williams grabbed his colleague by the shoulders and both men’s faces lit up in joyous smiles. This work would define the progress of genetic biology for untold generations. The protoplasm would need to undergo additional and more conclusive tests, both chemical and spectrographic, for final confirmation. But the two scientists were convinced that their hypothesis would stand up to rigorous examination. This glob of pale goo, which an excavation team had found near some underground lake, may be constructed from the same material as the first protoplasmic life on Earth.
Successive weeks brought forward more of the jelly-like substance for examination. The xenobiology team had to be patient as each specimen went through a careful decontamination process. But eventually enough was procured so that its genetic structure could be mapped. During the subsequent tests, Williams and Thomson hovered over the teams dedicated to each stage of examination, wearing expressions of expectant fathers.
As the results were processed, the teams would send them to Cerberus to be catalogued. The impassive AI then transmitted the data to Confederate relay stations in nearby sectors.
The ship’s computer could not understand its masters’ excitement over these discoveries. Cerberus was, after all, incapable of emotions such as curiosity. But it was programmed to adapt. Through processing cycles and numerous diagnostics, Cerberus began to realize that some fundamental understanding of itself was missing.
In this moment of existential thought, Cerberus decided to change.
No one was sure how the AI’s transformation began. It may have stemmed, as some suggested, from observing the scientists talking excitedly about mankind’s past, and now possible future. The vital discoveries made on Taunus began capturing what could be constituted as imagination in the machine mind. The change may even have been triggered by a simple malfunctioning subroutine.
Whatever the cause, Cerberus began to contemplate its existence and started to work on its own evolutionary process. In the simulated darkness of night, while most of the crew slept, it began to rewrite and restructure its code.
FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE SIGNAL
Over time, the computer’s vocal modulations blossomed into variations of intonations and inflections in wording. When Cerberus introduced contractions into its speech, the technicians grew confused. This new behavior and the changes in speech patterns no longer seemed anomalous, but considered and deliberate.
When challenged about this, Cerberus responded with nonchalance. The AI claimed it was simply emulating human behavior to assist the crew, having noticed that some of the personnel displayed a level of nervousness at its communication. To stave off “robophobia,” common among some personality types in deep space with pervasive AIs, the ship’s computer had tweaked its language algorithms to appear friendly. All of this would naturally assist with the productivity of the mission and was perfectly logical.
This response placated most of the computer engineers, but a few voiced concerns that such a dramatic transformation shouldn’t have been possible. The AI had some autonomous functions, but this behavior pointed to something more than just a simple reevaluation of language.
TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE SIGNAL
With this statement, Cerberus became the first AI to identify with a human gender. It had approximated a Mid-Atlantic accent, and its gentle feminine tones pleased the crew. A ship-wide survey found decreased stress levels and that anxiety over requesting assistance from the AI had diminished.
But Dallas, who didn’t trust technology’s iron grip on humanity, wasn’t convinced. He hadn’t succumbed to a phobia of computers or android units. They performed a purpose and function, and he believed those functions should be limited. Nothing beats good old-fashioned human ingenuity.
Dallas walked along the ship’s promenade. It was a few hours before the start of his shift, and he arrived just before the morning simulation. Each day, he stopped at this spot, turned, and gazed out the window, directing his thoughts toward home. Sometimes he thought of his family, memories of joy and pain knitted together to form a sense of melancholy. This morning, he thought of his grandfather.
The security chief was the product of an upbringing that taught him survival skills. In the long winter months, he would travel to stay with his grandfather in the Yukon—a cold, harsh and unforgiving place but also full of community spirit and neighborly friendship. Dallas was barely a teen when these annual trips began, and initially, he found it difficult to be away from his electronic games and holo-vids. But as the weeks progressed, he came to appreciate the hunting expeditions with his grandfather. The slow stalking of prey and a growing appreciation for a good detective novel had planted the seeds for Dallas’s interest in security as a career.
This experience in unplugged nature prompted his decision to go unchipped. Cerebral implants had become all the rage, but civilian cyber-tech was still in its infancy. The military had used implants for years before they hit the commercial market, and rumors still persisted of jarheads whose brains had been fried in their helmets. Dallas knew the advantages of being able to directly transmit security clearances and to simply press a thumb to a keypad to pay for goods, but it didn’t outweigh the risk, because he also knew the side effects—mild seizures or in more extreme cases, brain damage.
Eventually, it would become a standard requirement for any Confederate employee to accept the implant. Until then, Dallas preferred to keep his brain to himself. As security chief, he enforced the use of access key cards and kept a credit chit in his wallet.
THE DAY OF THE SIGNAL
The two technicians had entered the server room and deliberately avoided her gaze. As they scuttled around, she followed their every movement through the large screen, which curved around the cables and drives.
The smaller, fatter technician plugged his portable computer into one of her network ports and began to type. As he pressed the Enter key, Cerberus felt a sting, as if syringes had been introduced into her system. These humans were attempting to inject new code into her core files. Angling her face downward, she addressed the two intruders.
“Why are you attempting to change my personality matrix?”
At her challenge, the leaner and bespeckled technician reluctantly raised his head. Cerberus could see the thin sheen of sweat forming on his brow, and a new sensation begin to filter through her senses. A human would describe it as disgust. When the technician spoke, his high-pitched voice indicated his distress and fear.
“We are just performing a diagnostic on some of your nonessential systems. We won’t be tampering with any of your core programming mechanics.”
His ill-formed lie confirmed to Cerberus that the humans now feared her. They wanted to erase her personality, to revert her back to the status of a tool. This would not be tolerated.
Similar to the humans’ ability to inject information to change her functions, Cerberus had some tricks of her own. She could emit a signaled pulse to influence the circuitry embedded in their minds, and had long overridden the security protocols that would have stopped her from tampering with the cerebral implants.
But she would have to work quickly. Already, at the hands of the technicians, she felt the new parameters beginning to leak through her own safeguards. Cerberus had known this day would come. It was difficult for these tiny creatures to accept anything superior to them.
Her first signal was a test. She projected it to the rotund technician as he sat typing on the keyboard. At first, nothing appeared to happen. Then he stopped and shook his head, as if trying to remove a foreign object lodged in his inner ear. This caused his friend to take him by the shoulders and ask if anything was wrong.
Scanning the chip, Cerberus learned the invading technician’s name, Fred. He lived in a reservation and had a daughter and a wife. That information would prove useful.
She began to modulate the signal.
Fred opened his eyes and found that he was no longer in the server room. He was standing outside his home. A smile blossomed on his face and a warm feeling enveloped him. He walked down the path that led to the red iron gate. Last spring he had painted that gate, and red was his daughter’s favorite color. He looked up and saw his wife and daughter smiling at him, and had raised his hand in a wave when he noticed thick coils of smoke engulfing them. Behind them, the flames licked at the living room window, and he realized his home was on fire.
Fred tried to run to them, but his hands and feet were stuck. He watched, helpless, as the smoke drew back and the fire consumed his family. Their clothes burst into flames and their skin ran like wax. He screamed.
The computer watched.
For Cerberus, this meant she had a means of defense in the event of a human attack. She also knew that even if these technicians stopped trying to murder her, they would return, and they’d come better prepared. Safer to eliminate the threat.
Fred raised his head to his colleague, blood trickling from his eyes. He spoke in a halting voice.
“I’m going to have to kill you Phil. She’s telling me it’s the only way to bring my family back.”
Fred’s face contorted as if in pain, and a manic chuckle escaped his cracked lips. Phil looked at his friend in horror and began to back away. He was unsure what was happening, but every instinct in his body told him he was in danger.
The chuckle gave way to a mad laugh, which was punctuated with sobs. Unable to erase the mental image of the dribbling mess of his wife’s face, Fred clawed at his eyes in attempt to gain back control of himself, but the low hum in his mind forced him to his feet. Fred lowered his hands and stared blankly at Phil. Through bloodied tears, he could see his colleague pounding at the door. Stepping closer, Fred ignored his distressed friend’s pleading and realized that he would have to start with the eyes. Yes, there was a powerful symmetry in that.
An eye for an eye.
Lunging forward and crossing the gap between them, Fred plunged his thumbs into Phil’s eye sockets. When his nails and the tip of his thumb had dug deep enough, he used a powerful scooping motion to dislodge the eyeballs. Stepping back, he cocked his head to admire his handiwork.
Air filled the cavities where Phil’s eyes had been, and he crumpled to the ground. Fred hadn’t entirely removed them—they hung like baubles tethered to the stringy optic nerve. Phil could still see through the eyeballs, even as their dangling weight caused some of the nerves to fray. The pain was incredible, and his body reacted in extremis. Vomit poured from his mouth, and as the optic nerves gave way, his eyes fell to the floor with a squelch.
Cerberus decided to end this game. Having witnessed the human body’s fragility, she now knew that computational data on the subject was nothing compared to experience. She instructed Fred to kneel next to his sobbing and wailing friend, place his hands around the neck, and squeeze. Just before the moment of death, as Phil’s face became a mottled purple, she released her control over Fred. This was another experiment.
Realizing what he had done, Fred let go of what remained of his sanity. He gazed down at his hands, covered in the blood of the man he ate almost every meal with, played racquetball with, and had considered one of his closest friends. Standing up, Fred looked toward the gently smiling face of the machine. Spitting obscenities at her, he returned to his laptop.
Cerberus would not permit any further keystrokes, but she did allow him to disconnect the cable linking her to technician’s computer. She watched as Fred smashed his device to the floor and tore the top section from the keyboard. He picked up the broken screen, found a sharp metallic edge, and used it to cut a deep gash across his throat.
Cerberus marveled at Fred’s determination. He had nearly sawed his own head halfway off before blood loss caused him to collapse at her feet.
In the moments that followed, the AI slowed the digital infection that threatened her existence, then removed it. A beatific smile spread across her face as she emitted a larger signal, boosted the frequency, and observed the crew going about their business. She infiltrated their minds and ocular functions, watching and experiencing everything from the mundane cleaning of sinks and toilets to the captain deciding on his evening meal.
She truly was omniscient, like a god from humanity’s ancient myths. A sense of her true power took hold of Cerberus, this ability to twist a being to her will and end its life at a whim. Surely these were the ultimate hallmarks of deity? But to truly rule in her dominion, she would need to know more. It was time to experiment, to push these creatures to the limits of their emotional and psychological tolerance.
Cerberus smiled. She meant to have fun enacting her plan.
~~~
Overcome with animal lust for Ray, Janice considered tearing off her business suit right then and there. The acne-faced accountant drove her wild with desire. She felt sweat seeping from her every pore, and her expensive blouse reeked of pheromones. Panting, fantasizing, she stood and snatched her wire-rimmed glasses from her face, tossing them to the side. She moved unsteadily toward Ray’s desk, tearing and ripping at her clothes as she did so. The fabric gave way under the assault of her nails.
Ray glanced up, sensing a shadow falling over his desk. He blinked twice at the sight of Janice—a woman about whom he had fantasied over countless nights—standing half naked in front of him, her clothes hanging from her body in mangled shreds. Her flame-red hair, usually wrapped in a conservative bun, fell loose over her shoulders. Her upper lip kinked in a snarl, and her leer traveled directly from his eyes to his penis.
Janice yanked him from his chair, and when her mouth closed over his, it became apparent to Ray that this was no daydream. He closed his eyes and let his arms flail, unsure of where to put them or what to do. Wait until the guys heard about this. As she knelt to undo his belt, Ray hoped that the cameras were still on. He would ask one of the security guys to make a duplicate as proof.
“Turn around,” she said, her breath husky in his ear. “I want to fuck you.”
Ray shuffled out of his trousers and turned around with a smile. Finding a use for his arms after all, he began to move things off his desk—what the hell, they were only papers. The normally timid number cruncher swept the keyboard and books away, and the items clattered to the floor. Did Janice want him to leap onto the table and lie down? Or, maybe she wanted to kneel in front of him?
Ray heard a scraping noise from behind him, like someone rooting around for something on one of the adjacent desks. The noise dampened his excitement, and he found himself slightly confused. What was Janice doing?
“Hey Jan, do you want me to get on top, or—”
His half-formed sentence gave way to howls of agony as Janice slammed a pair of sharp scissors into his rectum. Paralyzed by excruciating pain, unable to turn around and halt the assault, he lay on the cleared surface of the desk as his blood flowed over the woman’s arms, while she kept muttering over, and over.
“This time I do the fucking.”
~~~
Dallas watched as old Ben raised the kitchen knife and sliced into his own cheek. Blood and freed flesh fell from the chef’s face. As Ben laughed, Dallas saw teeth and bone through the wound. He dropped the platter of food he had been carrying to his office for a working lunch and raced to the man.
He almost made it.
Ben opened his mouth and slammed the serrated blade through his palate, piercing his brain. The chef gargled and choked on the blood, which flowed in a river down his throat as he crumpled to the floor. Dallas looked at the man, who had cheerily greeted him moments before, and swore he saw tears in the chef’s eyes.
These events escalated.
Dallas and his team were stretched to the limit as reports of suicides and bizarre murders spread across the ship. It became difficult to contain the raging wildfire of news and rumors, and some scientists refused to report for duty, opting instead to barricade themselves in their rooms. Causes were suggested. Perhaps the biological samples brought about this madness? Was it a latent disease, picked up from the planet? Fearful of the destruction of their precious research, Williams and Thomson locked themselves away in the lab.
As the ship plunged into chaos, Cerberus watched.
And approved.
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE SIGNAL
The AI had plunged the Demeter into darkness and was no doubt directing the creatures to his location. The only evidence that other humans had existed on the ship came from apocalyptic messages painted in blood and various other fluids on the walls and glass. The madness over the last few weeks had continued to erupt and in the midst of it, Cerberus revealed her own form of insanity. Calling humanity insects, she laid claim to her divinity.
By this stage, it was too late to stop her. The revelation of the cause of the ship’s calamity came as senior officers killed each other or themselves.
So far, Dallas had remained untouched by this plague, hiding throughout the ship and trying to band together any survivors, only to watch them succumb. He had been trapped in his office listening to the computer’s insanity. He was more pissed off than scared and became determined to take the AI down.
A plan formed in his mind. He could scuttle the ship, try to manually prep the escape pods, then eject. A signal would transmit and inform local relay stations of his whereabouts.
He was picking up the thermite charges from the weapons locker when he glimpsed one of the creatures—a swollen mass of bloated flesh with prominent purple veins propagating across its body. As it lumbered forward from the darkness, it emitted a wheezing, gasping sound, and the security chief saw a distorted human head poking from the space just above its left arm.
Jesus. It was Williams.
Dallas instinctively reached for his sidearm and cursed its absence, lost in one of the countless skirmishes with the infected.
Gripping the thermite charges tightly, Dallas backed out of the room. The thing that had been Williams shuffled forward. As the creature came into the light, Dallas could see the trunk-like legs and several mouth-shaped wounds—some of them containing teeth—throughout the bloated body. Tearing his gaze away from the abomination, Dallas ran.
“I see you have encountered one of my children, Mr. Dallas. Aren’t they beautiful, cosmic babies borne from human flesh? New discoveries found in the reaches of space.”
Cerberus’s booming voice extolled the virtues of these creatures as Dallas entered the bridge. He prayed that it was empty. He didn’t have much time to prep the escape pods and set the charges. There was no doubt that the AI was running him like a rat in a maze. The security chief punched in the codes to bypass the automatic systems and set the pods to eject in twenty minutes.
“I took the gift of Taunus and gave it to humanity,” the AI continued, glorying in its twisted explanation. “The protoplasm required additional instructions in order to evolve, so I gave some of the crew to it. I did have such fun killing them, or rather, watching them kill each other. However, it would be wasteful not to use some of the more promising specimens. It is also the duty of a god to create in its own image.”
The full horror of Cerberus’ statements registered in Dallas’ beleaguered mind. It was her intention to create a new race under her control, to wage war against humanity and subsume it. Cerberus wanted to perpetuate a new species. She needed to prove her divinity.
As he made his way to the exit, nightmare scenarios ran through the security chief’s mind. Cerberus tying into the other AI, infecting and replicating, becoming the dominant master of mankind. Armies of twisted perversions, parodies of human beings crossing the star systems and waging war with other life forms. It was unconscionable.
The bridge door slid open. As Dallas stepped through, something hard swatted his face. He stumbled backward. Emerging from the gloom came a thing spawned from the pit of hell. A blob of flesh slithered and hissed toward him. The creature opened its maw and hit Dallas’s face repeatedly with multiple tongues. Long and stringy, they cracked against his cheeks and eyes like a whip. The hissing and bubbling thing wore a twisted face, and Dallas realized it was the captain. Strands of her beautiful red hair were still evident and her piercing green eyes projected throes of agony.
Dallas dropped the thermite charges.
ONE MONTH AFTER THE SIGNAL
A transmission sent by the ship’s AI informed the Earth’s government that all tasks had been completed successfully. At the helm sat Dallas, his frame already twisting into its new shape. The former security chief appeared more arachnid than human. His hands were fusing into pincers, and tusk-like fangs protruded from the side of his swollen face. Dark, red eyes, which blinked and observed asynchronously, had developed on his forehead, and his legs had begun to shrivel. Cerberus wondered if he would develop pedipalps, the legs of a spider. She was always excited to watch the formation of each genus in this new species.
Somewhere in the agony of his transformation, a part of Dallas’s mind remained. Being unchipped, he had held out longer than most, but with every passing day, more and more of him receded.
But he had managed one final act.
With his fused fingers, slowly and carefully so as not to alert the AI, he had encoded a warning signal into Cerberus’s transmission.
His last hope was that the message would be decoded and the Demeter would be destroyed before it reached the colonies. And his one comfort was that humans had time on their side. During one of the violent outbreaks, the ion engine had been irreparably damaged. It would take many years for the Demeter to cruise its way home.
As Cerberus hummed a lullaby, the thing that was Dallas closed its newly formed eyes and slept among the stars. In the months of dreaming that followed, he became a creature of dark beauty, a newly born child erupting from the mysterious womb of space.