Chapter 9

Soth sang. At the beginning, first came the song. Then followed the waters, then the plants and animals. They multiplied, and grew, and changed, but the Song remained. The Song guided the growth, and the world became ordered, each plant and animal finding their place in the great depths. Some wandered too close to the top of the world and could no longer hear the Song. Soth denied them the depths. - The Song Creates, first stanza

Liuani was surprised to receive the call that night. She had been chatting with Wyrthal and Hugos about their work in the Environmental Management and Development section. Of all of her broodmates, these two always seemed to be away from their home, working on some project, so she had been looking forward to hearing what they had been up to.

“Hello? Liuani speaking.”

“Hello Liuani, I am Ersul, director of Reconnaissance, Seralli section. I am sorry to intrude on your off time but I need to request your presence for a meeting being held in an hour. If you don’t believe you can make it, I would need to know immediately.”

Liuani had no idea why he would be contacting her regarding the Seralli, but it certainly sounded urgent and her broodmates would understand.

“No problem Director, I am available. Where do I need to go?”

“Thank you. Please make your way to the main building for the Reconnaissance division, in the government sector as soon as possible. The meeting will start once you have arrived.”

Well, that was not what she had expected to be doing this night. She took a second to think about the call and was left wondering what her role was to be in this meeting. On the surface, it seems pretty straightforward, her last project had been a detailed analysis of the Seralli cultural evolution from their discovery of mass production to the present, with a focus on the cultural impact. She was unaware of anyone else working on another research project on the Seralli at this time.

She apologized to Wyrthal and Hugos about the sudden departure and asked if they were going to be around for very long this time. They both indicated that they were working on training for the next week cycle at the least. She wished them a good night and headed out, summoning a transport when she reached the front door.

As she was traveling to the building, she contacted the system at her office and brought her notes on the Seralli up to her virtual desktop. She figured that the purpose of having her at this meeting would be as an expert in the cultural state of the Seralli. Once she had the information organized for quick reference, she sat back and relaxed for the rest of the trip.

It was still the early evening, so when she arrived there were still lots of traffic on the streets and sidewalks. Liuani made her way into the building and was able to quickly locate the office where the meeting was being held. Her personal id meant that the security doors admitted her when she approached them. That gave her a little hint of how significant this meeting might be, as she had no reason to be given access to these areas of the department otherwise.

She was surprised to see who the others would be that were going to be attending the meeting. Liuani was able to recognize the senior coordinator for the Reconnaissance department, along with what appeared to be at least two or three commander types that usually go out on the missions. Liuani was not too surprised at her identifying a few Sel from across the room as being active participants in the Reconnaissance missions. She had seen others that Surot had pointed out to her, from other missions walking around the same meal hall that she used. The more time that a Sel spent offworld, the more pronounced the changes to their skin colouration became.

The experts argued that the lack of continual exposure to trace elements in the environment, resulted in a muting of the distinct colours. When this had first been noticed in exploration teams, it had been suggested that the natural colouration was a light grey colour, with any differences being put down to environmental variables.

What threw her off a little was when she recognized the uniforms of three individuals standing off to one side, in what looked to be a serious conversation. They were obviously members of the military, senior members if she understood the markings on the uniforms correctly.

The director must have had his AI monitoring for her as she had barely had time to look around before he could be heard asking for everyone to take a seat please as they were all here now. All of the couches had clear views to the display center and as the lights dimmed, the console projected an image of the Seralli homeworld.

“I want to thank everyone for making this meeting with such short notice. I know that you are, for the most part, wondering why you are all here. We are meeting to address a serious event that has occurred on the Seralli homeworld recently. Normally we would not interfere with the internal events of a sentient species. Deciding what we will, or will not do, is the objective of this meeting. I will take the suggestions that are generated here to the quorum for final confirmation.”

The director took a look around the room, giving everyone the opportunity to absorb that statement.

“There will be opportunity for questions when the initial briefing is finished, so please wait for that. At this time I will ask Cilik Truss to take over the briefing.” He indicated one of the Reconnaissance personnel that Liuani had noticed initially.

The officer he indicated moved to the console before she addressed everyone.

“I am Cilik Truss, I was leading the most recent mission to the Seralli homeworld. We were there to monitor their efforts in building what appeared to be their first power generation station utilizing nuclear power.” The Cilik indicated a spot on the globe, and that spot stayed visible as a light yellow dot on the surface of the planet image.

“We had been there for 2 of their day/night cycles. As you can see, the site they selected for constructing this power station is away from any inhabited regions. This did mean that there was a larger presence of non-sentient local life swimming around. At this point, the number of non-sentient species that were around our ship was higher than we were used to and we were concerned that they might draw attention to us. We were using the standard dispersion field to keep them at a distance, but we were running it at the lowest setting to minimize the chances of detection.”

“I ordered that the field strength be increased by another 5%. We have used these settings in other parts of this planet and it has been most effective in ’encouraging’ the local wild life to avoid our ships. That was not happening now.”

The Cilik made adjustments on the console and a new image popped up replacing the image of the globe. It looked to be an underwater view.

“This is a recording from our sensors at the time just prior to my ordering the increase in the field strength.”

Suddenly on the screen, Liuani can see the creatures that are swimming near the ship seem to give a small shiver and start moving very quickly, but not moving away.

“We noticed the change in activity immediately and I decided to move away from that area before it became too obvious. It became apparent immediately that we would be unable to move without hitting some of them if they were not dispersed somehow. I had the dispersion field give a pulse, 20x the present setting. There was the chance that the Seralli would detect that broadcast, but it was so brief that I decided the risk worth it.”

The image above the console showed the lifeforms swirling around the ship, not getting closer but not moving away. Suddenly the whole gathering just took off directly away from the ship as fast as they could move.

“With the lifeforms cleared away, we relocated to a spot closer to the surface, and twice the distance from the site. There had been no apparent reaction from the construction site. We had only just decided that we had not been detected when the sensors started reporting massive seismic activity behind our location, away from the construction site.”

The Cilik paused, Liuani could tell that she was remembering something. It was only for a few seconds before she was speaking again.

“The sensors were saying that a section of the sea floor, approximately 125 kilometers wide and 368 kilometers long, was rising. This was occurring in one of the deepest parts of their oceans. I was wondering if this part of their world was known for seismic activity and if this was accounted for in the construction planning. Then I was informed that the sea floor was moving...that it was moving in our direction.”

The Cilik looked at the display and it changed to display what looked like the sea floor. It took Liuani a few seconds to notice the movement. Initially, all she saw were creatures moving, generally in the same direction. That stood out as odd at first, but there was something about their movements that did not look right. It came to her, they all looked like they were swimming at an angle. That is when she was able to see that the ’ocean floor’ behind them, was moving too.

It was surreal, the terrain behind and below them, was moving in a slightly different direction from them. The Cilik expanded the view to include more of the creature, losing sight of the smaller creatures. The computer enhanced the creatures outline, making it more apparent...a chunk of sea floor was moving. There was no other way to describe it.

“At that point, the turbulence from the movement reached our area, and the ship was being constantly buffeted by powerful currents. It did take us a minute to get control of the ship again. Once we were settled, I called for a status update on all sensors. I was quickly informed that the construction site had been completely levelled. There was so much debris in that area that we could not immediately tell what the loss of life might have been.”

The Cilik paused here, looking around at the assembled individuals. If she was expecting a specific reaction there were many for her to choose from. Some were showing shock, others looked like they were expecting more to come and were determined to wait to hear everything.

“We had just started to get information on the site, our sensors also showing that the closest city/town would be reached by the turbulence in just over 17 minutes. That was when my senior sensor technician sounded the alarm. He did not try to tell me what the alarm was, he just sent the sensor feed to my screen. One look was all it took to know that this was not like any seismic activity we had ever seen. The sensors indicated that a section of the sea floor had just broken free, in a single large piece, and was moving toward our position.”

“Essentially that whole section that we had observed before, pushing up from the sea floor, had continued to rise, and the sensors could clearly see that it was separated from the sea floor. Now this section, 368 long by 125 wide by 810 meters thick, was on the move. It was over a thousand kilometres away and over 53 kilometres deeper in the water...and it was closing on our location.”

“I ordered the ship to withdraw out of the water and up to 10km above the water. Even out of the water it was very easy to track the anomaly. It was obvious to the naked eye, the surface of the ocean was bulging upward. It was apparent that ocean life was moving as quickly as possible in direct lines away from the center of this...event.”

“As we watched, it moved until it had reached the point that we had been at immediately before we exited the water. It actually started to come up, but stopped from breaching the surface by a just over 100m.”

“At this point it seemed to pause for a short time, then it started moving. We noticed immediately that it was able to move through the water much faster than pretty much anything else. We could see that the other aquatic life was moving in all directions away from whatever this was, but whatever was in the path this was moving in just disappeared after it had passed. To the best of our analysis, it was consuming indiscriminately anything organic that it encountered.”

“We observed it dropping deeper into the water, until it had reached the sea floor. It proceeded to devastate a swath along the sea floor, it’s entire width. It did slow down appreciably as it moved now though. We did see it approach one of the smaller towns, it did not try to avoid it at all. It did seem to stop when it first encountered it, but then proceeded to move through it as well. We did see the native sentient species also attempting to flee before it, those with mechanical assistance did seem to make it clear, but the majority did not make it. That town had an estimated population of between 3000 and 3500 sentients.”

Liuani watched with horrified fascination, at the images being played from the scout ships logs. At first the...thing approaches the town, then it just seems to slowly move across it, as if it is passing over it. When the last of the creature passes over the boundary of the town, it is clear that it did not pass over.

The ground itself was scraped away. The passage of the creature left a trench over 100m deep, almost as wide as the creature itself. It was not a smooth, machine like scrape, there were gouges and tears in the underlying surface, like things had been ripped up, or torn free.

“It was at this point that I reported back what was happening and received orders to return.”

No one spoke immediately, trying to grasp the idea that something could live that was so…so incredibly massive. Liuani was fascinated by the images being displayed. She had never even heard of another living thing that matched this.

The director sounded a chime to get everyone’s attention. Once he was sure that he had it, he closed the image and took a seat, looking around at the assembled group. His gaze stopped on the military lead present.

“I think we need to know if there is any way that we can affect this…thing?”

The military lead took a second to glance at some notes that he had obviously made beforehand.

“From what we can tell, standard weaponry should be fully effective. It is not a matter of whether we can hurt it, but how much damage we would have to do to either kill or disable it.”

“Should we be considering this? This creature is obviously native to the planet and therefore part of the biosystem. It is not unreasonable to think that all we are seeing is a natural event for these beings. It may appear to be a tragedy, but it may also be…common, for lack of a better term.”

One of the government representatives put that out there. He did not look like was trying to assert that, more just pointing out that their mandate is not to interfere unnecessarily. Though he had reacted to the deaths of so many sentients with the same discomfort as everyone else.

There was an exchange of glances at that suggestion, but no one was quick to deny it. The director did have an uncomfortable look at this suggestion. He seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration. The laws were clear on interactions with alien races, the most important one is to allow them to evolve on their own.

If the scout had reported that he had detected an imminent asteroid impact, then the situation would be simple: redirect the asteroid, destroy it if necessary. It was widely acknowledged that intelligent life was very rare, so events that were outside of a race’s control, like that, would be prevented if encountered. But if a race destroyed itself, that is their choice.

Liuani was glad that she was not the one to make that call. Personally, she was appalled at the idea of the Seralli potentially being completely wiped out by this…thing. Wait…there was something about it that was triggering a memory. She could not remember what it was, but just that there was something about what the scout commander described that seemed vaguely familiar.

Something in the scout cilik’s description…why was she thinking about the area that she had described. That seemed like an unusually deep part of the oceans, the Seralli live in the water, but they are still subject to physics. Depths like that would still crush them long before they reached the bottom.

The scout cilik was in a discussion with a government, dealing with finances Liuani thought. She sent a signal for her attention to her Individual Interface. It took a few minutes before she was able to respond. She came over to where Liuani was sitting, this close she could see the small signs of someone who was feeling stress.

“How may I assist you?” her polite question had the feel of having been repeated a lot lately. Undoubtedly she had been talking with a number of officials since her report first arrived.

“Thank you for your time, I can appreciate how busy you must be. I have a question about the area you were monitoring when you first noticed the event. Was there a specific reason you were monitoring that particular location?”

“Our focus for this trip was on detailing the expansion of the Seralli, it had been noted on other visits that they seemed to have a specific agenda in the expansions of their ‘cities’. We had planned on spending half an orbital revolution of their planet monitoring their growth and identifying any repeating habits.”

“That location was the 8th we had observed, it had drawn our attention because it did not fit the pattern they had otherwise shown. We had been monitoring them for several day/night cycles before the event happened.”

“What do you mean it did not fit the pattern?”

Liuani could see her trying to resist looking too closely at her central eye. She was being very subtle, but Liuani was used to the attention it would draw. She focused on the Cilik’s answer.

“I mean that the projections that had been calculated on previously recorded patterns of movement, and construction. According to the projections, this section should have had a very low percentage chance for being developed.”

“Why was it considered unlikely for them to build there?”

“They like to build their cities in concentric circles, basically, joined by multiple arms or spokes, between circles. The power plants have always been constructed at points between cities, with a maximum of 6 ’spokes’ connecting to them. This new location was one of the deepest builds we had ever seen them undertake, and there was no room for expansion to one side of the site. As well, with the chasm to one side, even if it was a kilometre away, it still would make it impossible for 6 spokes to attach.”

“Could it have been due to the risky nature of that particular power plant? You did say that this was the first nuclear based power plant they had built. I would think it would be logical for them to build it where it would do minimal damage.”

“The Seralli don’t plan like that. Their first geothermal powerstation required them to sink a shaft over 500m straight down, it came within 200m of a magma pocket, and they did this in the usual manner, between settled areas. So they are either not concerned with the safety element, or they build only once they are sure it is going to work.”

“You said this was the first power plant of this type to be constructed. Could it be that there were some specific geological requirements?”

“Of that I could not say. It certainly did not look like any other power plant they had ever made.”

“How was it different from the others?”

“That is hard to describe. All their architecture uses rounded edges of course, nothing like an edge to create eddies. But it almost seemed like they were trying to make this as sharp edged as possible.”

The cilik brought up an image in front of Liuani, a miniaturized representation of the power plant. Liuani was just rotating the image, examining the different sides when she just stopped. She sat there looking at the image, not moving, her eyes half closed as she tried to find the reference.

“Oh my. Now that is not what I was expecting to see.”

Liuani pulled the view back, up and away from the structure. She pulled back until the escarpment that marked the edge of the chasm came into view. The cilik just stood there, watching her manipulate the image.

“The creature!”

Her brief statement came out almost a shout. It certainly had the effect of silencing the room and drawing all gazes to her. The cilik had taken a half step back at the exclamation. She had a look of confusion.

“The creature? What are you talking about?”

Liuani looked up at the cilik, apparently lost for words. She noticed the silence and looked around to find all the attendees looking at her with varying degrees of attention.

“I..um...I think I have something that everyone needs to see” she stated quickly looking down at the table top as she started bringing up files and searching through them.

Some of them moved back to their seats, the others just stood watching her, waiting for her to explain her outburst.

Liuani was sure what she was looking for was in the passage from an early document. She was grateful the watery environment had meant the Seralli had to stay with stone tablets for longer than most other races.

It only took her a minute to find the pieces that she was looking for.

She brought up an image of one of the Seralli tablets.

“Everyone, this is called ’The Dee’. It is one of the oldest tablets in their archives on the planet. We have dated the tablet to being over 15,000 cycles old. During the translation, I was able to determine that this was actually a copy. Not just that but, it is likely a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on.”

“That is fascinating, but what relevance does this have to the creature?” That question came from one of the scout mission administrators that were in the meeting.

Liuani felt like she should be a little intimidated to be briefing everyone like this, and in such an ad hoc manner, but the more that she thought about this, the more certain she became about what she was about to propose.

“If you will bear with me for a little bit more. I need to explain the context of this for it to become clear how momentous this might be for the Seralli.”

Liuani paused and gave the assembled group a quick glance in case someone else had something to say. Ersul made a small gesture for her to continue.

“As part of my analysis into their culture, I researched the importance of this tablet and found that the Seralli had a small sect of their religious groups that had an apocalypse omen. What made this one different was that they never stated a date, only that it would inevitably happen, and it would not come from outside of their world. Their texts make constant reference to this tablet.”

“Now I know that when I say a copy of a copy of a copy...it immediately comes to mind that things don’t get copied exactly the same way. That is not the case with this tablet. There are recorded instructions in how the tablet is to be recorded, which is the biggest reason I believed this to be a multiple copy version. The instructions call for no less than 5 copies to be made when they need a new one, only the most accurate reproduction is kept. The others are completely destroyed in a ceremony that ensures they are silt when done.”

“The tablet is a cautionary tale, claiming to be from a survivor of the time of the last passage of ’Dee’. The tablet states how ’Dee’ passed over their world, consuming everything in its path. How after the passage of one cycle, ’Dee’ vanished. What was left was a scattering of survivors, plants and animals. According to the tablet, the face of their world had been changed. Where once were mountains, were now hills.”

“Interestingly, according to the tablet, the cycles following the devastation of ’Dee’ were very successful for harvests. Now, there is no physical description of ’Dee’ in the tablet, just vague references to an overwhelming presence.”

“Are you seriously trying to suggest that this thing is part of the cycle of life on their planet?”

“I know how it sounds. At the same time, it makes sense if you examine the oldest texts they have, both religious and historical. Granted sometimes it is hard to separate them from one another. And there is only the one specific reference to this...thing. There are numerous reference over the ages to odd geographical features, plateaus and valleys that have no apparent source.”

“We understand that rivers carve valleys over time, but there are geological texts, very recent texts, from the Seralli that have been trying to explain certain terrain features that are everywhere, and they cannot. They have a very advanced understanding of the geological formation of their environment and the official answer for why this part of the ocean floor is relatively smooth, even though there are active fault lines less than 50 kilometres away, is ’we don’t know’.”

“The researcher that was leading this project was the environmental expert and he did a thorough examination of the geological development of 5 of their most developed cities. I remember that he was confused that the cities were undoubtedly old enough, but that their environment made no sense.”

Liuani paused here and did a fast request for the specifics of that report from her AI. A second later an icon appeared on her display and she opened it, quickly moving through it to the part she wanted.

“Here it is: ’The second largest metropolis of the Seralli is situated on the plateau of one of the largest hills in the Doolupi region, in the northern hemisphere. The ground there is very capable of handling the large structures that they use for multifamily habitation. Further examination indicates they are actually building on the bedrock itself. The plateau should not exist. The underlying strata is not shaped correctly for the typical plateau, it is like they decided to shave the top of the hill. According to the analysis, they would have had to remove a good 300-400 meters from the top of the hill.’”

Liuani looked up to get a sense of what the general reaction was. She could see a lot of questioning looks, but not many agreeing with her.

“I understand that this sounds ridiculous. I have not checked previously but I would suggest that this report is not the only indication of odd anomalies from that planet.”

She quickly formulated a query for her AI to process, requesting the number of entries in all documentation they have on or about the Seralli that mention geological anomalies. It only took her AI a few seconds to return with the number: 7129.

She could that the size of the number surprised everyone. Conversations started up, trying to put this in context with what they knew now. The cilik had not gone far and after a pause of a few seconds, stepped closer and gestured at the number.

“What exactly was included in the definition of ’anomaly’ that your AI used?”

“I have used a similar search before and defined the word anomaly as one where something is being described, or mentioned, in a way that is out of context for that type of thing.”

“Okay, but that still leaves room for rumour and myth to get included.”

“That is true. I did that intentionally, as both rumour and myth often have a basis somewhere in reality and I did not want to exclude that information. I have configured my AI so anything that was found that is not based in fact, would be categorized appropriately for further verification if necessary.”

Liuani caught a piece of a conversation that seemed to be going on about how time can make strange affects to geological features. This made her think that checking for the time of the oldest identified geological anomaly might help.

She reconfigured her search to place the results chronologically. Once they were organized, she expanded the view to encompass the whole planet, removing the oceans to make the changes clearer. She configured the display to use colours closer to the infrared as the oldest and those near ultraviolet for the most recent.

“As you can see, the marks we observed occur all over the planet. Not only that, some of the marks clearly intersect and the closest unaffected terrain would indicate the time between the changes is about 50,000 cycles.”

“One of the results of the project was the identification that the Seralli civilization that we see today is not the first to reach this level of development. There is no single statement in the documentation of theirs that we have managed to acquire that says this. What we have found are statements in historical documents that make no sense...unless taken in a certain context. Even then, it only answered some of the questions.”

Liuani brought up a graph, displaying a timeline going on for 250000 cycles with the cycles along the bottom and a symbol for civilization level on the left side. The graph looked like an unstable sine wave. The pattern undeniably clear, but not reaching the same peaks and valleys that a sine wave would, and no sine wave showed the straight drop on the right side of the peak. Each peak in the line, almost immediately upon reaching the level of civilization, category A3, suffered some form of cataclysm and crashed to a basic civilization rating of F7.

“This graph was extrapolated from the data, after all of our individual projects had been submitted. There are signs that this civilization has undergone multiple rises then collapses, about every 50,000 cycles.”

She could see she had all their attention now. It was the cilik that brought up the most relevant point.

“According to this graph, there should have been another 2 to 3 thousand cycles before this cataclysm would happen again, assuming it was a repeating occurrence.”

Liuani checked the graph against her notes. “Yes, that is about right. Assuming there was some repeating cataclysm causing the civilization collapses.”

“What is the variance for error?” the cilik sounded a little strained.

“That is hard to place. We don’t know what actually happens. We estimate an error factor on the schedule of about 2-4%.”

The center eye on the cilik was a barely perceptible slit in her forehead.

“Somehow we caused this event, didn’t we?”

Liuani did not want to agree with her. The project had shown that the Seralli did seem to go through some form of civilization collapse about every 50,000 cycles, so it was going to happen again if history was any way to measure. Did it really matter in the greater scheme of things if it happened a couple thousand cycles early? A tragedy is a tragedy, no matter when it occurs.

“I can’t say for certain if you were responsible for this, or if the event was going to happen and you just happened to be there at the time of the event.”

The conversations had stopped as everyone became aware of the terrible possibilities.

The Director seemed to collect his thoughts first, he gestured for everyone to take their seats again. Once that was done, he cancelled the looping projection of the ’creature’, and the graph and data that Liuani had brought up.

“At this time we do not know what this thing is, why it is doing what it is doing and even if we should try and stop it. Assuming it is the creature from myth that you have educated us on, then it is clearly part of the biosphere of the planet. At the same time, we are witnessing what may well be the elimination of one of the few sentient species in the galaxy.”

He paused there, looking over each of the attendees slowly.

“Tonight is not the night, and here is not the place for this decision. I will go back to the council and recommend sending another expedition to the Seralli homeworld as soon as possible to do as thorough an examination of the creature as possible. We need to understand it better before we can decide what we will do.”

“I thank you all for attending, please enjoy the rest of your evening.”

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