Sci fi short The Exodus of Iltrath

RIGHT MY SPELLING AND GRAMMA ARE ATROCIOUS AND I AM NOT GOOD AT STORY TELLING BUT IF THIS INSPIRES FEEL FREE TO USE AT WILL, in part this was inspired by Future shock storys from the old 2000AD comic I used to read as a kid.


The Exodus.

Countless people had died in the last few moments as the artificial magnetic field collapsed, the temperature and particle radiation had gotten too much for the two polar satellites that had generated the great artificial magnetosphere for nearly a million years now since our ancestors had built them and they had finally been overloaded by the energy of our dying sun Karis, Iltrath lay burning now but we had known it was coming for many thousands of years, looking down on the planet below it was hard and painfull seeing the flames racing around from the day side while we sheltered in the shadow of the planet and even here the radiation was lethal.

Below the last lights of the great citys flickered and went out as the wave of fiery fury and plasmatised atmosphere rushed around with the steam clouds of the boiling oceans, any life left below was broiled away and incinerated, We screamed in shared pain with all of our people below whom died but there was nothing we could do and we owed it to those whom we had on board to continue with the exodus.

There had not been time to build more of these ships so only a few had finally been built and each to seek its own destination, though earlier exodus had left the planet many times to many destinations some now unkown lost to the ages, always they had left the poor masses behind but some out of there own ethics always stayed to try to find a way and at last in the face of an environment in which organic life could no longer live and the vast distances between our home and other stars that might harbour suitable planets we could adapt to our use or ourselves to we had finally used a form of nano technology to integrate those whom were selected into the ships themselves.

As I lay back against the integration couch and closed my eyes I felt a sensation of comfort and warmth then a tingling in my entire body, suddenly I started to feel the ship and could look out of the hull seeing things my eyes never could, I could hear the stars and the roar of the particles racing around the planet and impacting the hull a shower of hot sparks against my skin and it hurt but not too badly as yet, I could feel the radiation passing through my hull and wondered at my body which would never survive that amount of damaging radiation so I watched myself being integrated.

My body was now grey with the nanites replacing all of my cellular structure, then I watched as the body was absorbed into the integration couch with also flattened and dissapeared into the wall, my entire nervous system had been contained intact but absorbed into the ship and turned into a solid state that replicated its functions, then I thought about the others, my mind could see a form of software generated world were we could interact as individuals and many chose to do so going about there simulated lives as though they were still down on Iltath but others, the scientists and engineers were networking there minds and using there enhanced mental abillitys to plan what lay ahead.

I watched as our ship changed shape almost like it was a fluid and we left the burning world and the dying star behind, Neutronium harvested from a stella fragment was combined with anti matter and the resultant expansion energy was released to propel us to near one thousandth of a percent of the speed of light, the excelleration seemed to take forever but had we not been now part of the ship our organic forms would have simple been destroyed, as our ship travelled it would harvest any matter it came across and in the event of no world being found it itself would become that world.

It had been theorized that the earlier exodus may have spawned many new races in the hundreds of thousands of years they had been occuring, each time Karis had increased its solar output the satellite stations were expected to fail but they had been continuously modified as the scientists always found a way, Karis was now in her final stages and would likely go nova within a few thousand years, the star was now so big that at noon the horizon was the only place not filled by the red glow of her expansion and that expansion was accelerating, At last even with anti matter and neutronium powering the satellite generators the environment had grown too harsh and they had finally begun to fail.

So we set course through a darkness none of us had ever known under the glare of Karis to the distant stars, a young yellow dwarf star had been detected in the process of formation with a large accretion disc, a nebulous stella nursery in the neighbouring arm of our galaxy about a third further out than Karis and it was theorized that it would likely give birth to multiple planets so it was our first chosen to seek a new habitable world, the journey would take about 2 billion years but as long as and our ship was not struck by a neutron wave we would be OK and the ship would harvest any matter and energy it encountered, most of the occupants chose to sleep in a dreamless state for the time but groups of us would stay awake to maintain the ship with our own intelligence enhanced by the artificial intelligence of the ship, it was realized that over time the two would merge for those of us whom did this.
.......
For Unity of I the deceleration took thousands of years but at last below me I could see a suitable planet so for many millions of years I tweaked the atmosphere while my nanites released clouds of spores that were engineered to biologically adapt the planet, in all this time my primary purpose had never been forgotten and at last I generated the cellular structures and tweaked the life I had seeded to recreate the life from my archives that has once dwealt on the land and in the oceans of Iltrath, many times I had to purge the planet of the life I had seeded as it deviated and the planet being smaller than Iltrath it was not so easy having to adapt the lifeforms, it was in the right solar climate zone and the only long term stable candidate for the task though, at long last it was almost ready so extracting from my archives I reengineered tweaked cellular structure using my nanites to recreated the Iltrathian race, they were taller and not quite the same but they were now sentient and I was forbidden from taking further action so seperating the consciousness from myself I used the integration suite to recreate several Iltrathian scientist but because of the stella radiation that had saturated me for over two billion years I had to maintain them with nanites and they looked alien being a hybridisation of what they had been and what they had become, there bulbous heads accomodated there higher level of enhanced intelligence and there skin was grey with the nanite saturation but these people were soon commanding me and from myself I spawned many smaller ships for there tasks, I was stationed in a parked equatorial orbit my spherical hull hardened by ages of interstellar impacts and mass accumulation I watched as they worked on recreating there world below to an image they idealized and wondered why they never asked me to reawaken the millions I had asleep within my structure.

But for now I would guard the sleeping Iltrathians until the world was ready to recieve them waiting

Good read but why was he the only survivor?

reply to post by ChefSlug


Sorry I am not a good writer and never have been but the explanation is that once they became integrated they were essentially software and over 2 billion years the ones whom had chosen to stay awake had merged into a sing entity - the unity of I but the others were still dorment awaiting the day the ship could reverse the nono technological integration and restore them to life as seperate entitys but they had chosen to sleep until that day. The term Unity of I was merely a nod to the idea that the merged entitys of the scientists and engineers whom had chosen to stay awake for the two billion year journey had become a single entity and that being alien to what they had been, the grey nanite tinge to there skin and the over sized bulging heads were an unashamed nod to the grey alien culture while the object could or could not be a moon but that is down to the reader and the readers interpretation, while I am in no way talented I know the best writers knowingly or unknowingly are like painters using the pallet of the readers imagination to paint images of worlds and lives outside the readers own experience but to which they can relate.
Thanks for the compliment but I accept it was something I should have worked on more but you know 4 hour upload window and all.


Here is a continuation for you just a few lines.

Irvin Johnson was stuck in traffic again, the freeway was backed up for miles suddenly his phone rang and pressing his hands free he was greeted by his colleague Boris Koslowski, Irvin was just about to explain why he was late to the facility when Boris sounding exited said "Irvin you gotta get here as soon as you can there is something happening on the moon, somthing big".

It was no big secret though the NSA and CIA had spent millions of dollars on damage control and disinformation had been circulated but since the 1970's they had known there was something off about the moon and several intriguing artefacts had been retrieved by black ops air force missions using clones of the apollo space craft but the reverse engineering had been a washout as they turned out to be mostly junk or otherwise so decayed and turning to powder the engineers and scientists could never make out what they were supposed to be.

Irvin scratched his head and removed his glasses pinching the bridge of his nose as he squnited then as he put them back on he said "Ill be a few hours the freeway is baked up, almost stationary and I am about a quarter mile to the next turn pike". As Boris put the phone down Irvin noticed the people in the cars around him were looking up and the sound of a very low chopper nearby started to litteraly shake his car as the down force pummeled it, then two guys in black uniforms dropped on ropes beside his car, "Mr Johnson I am Leutenant Bailey, I have orders to take you streight to the pentagon, private Harrison will take care of your vehicle come with me". The next thing he knew he was being winched up to a military chopper in a harness with the leutenant by his side.

As the chopper skimmed low over the city block the pilot turned back and said "Leutenant change of plans we are to deliver him direct to Warren City, then the pilot corrected his course and the chopper banked sharply to the left. Several hourse later they approached a rugged ridge somewere in the rockys and Irvin screamed as the chopper flew streight into t cloud that was drifing in front of a sheer cliff face.

As he tended his steer, old Chuck looked up at the chopper, another of those military aircraft, it was unusual to see them by day but he had been warned never to speak of them, it flew streight into the cloud hugging the cliff but as the cloud drifted away there was no wreckage and he thought to himself "Clever the way they do that except there is not a cloud in the sky until twentey minutes before that chopper and then it is gone alone with the chopper, They hide the door so well even I can't see it and I've lived her nigh on fifty years", then Chuck with a slight smile went back to pulling feed from the back of his old ford pickup while the steer milled around waiting for some feed, the dry summer had left the pasteurs parched.