A Novel – In
One Page Per Day
Day 156, Tuesday
June 5th,
2018
Interlude: Part Two – Vulnerable
The Continuum, while it was a singularly paranoid
consciousness, had done little in regard to its self-defenses.
Continuum believed itself to be secure in its power.
In its billions of years of existence, it had never
encountered another rival, or any sentient life apart from the living beings
that were descended from the same ancient people who had originally formed the
Collective.
There was the Collective, formed by the Ancients as the
ultimate repository of its knowledge and consciousness.
There was the Continuum formed by the Collective as a
means of representing the unified will of the Collective, and administering to
the vast material, technological, and administrative requirements of the
Central Planet and its systems.
There was the Empire, formed by the Continuum, to supply
it with resources.
The Empire served the Continuum, worshipped it, prayed to
the Collective, and delivered all of its wealth in metals, in energy to the
Central system, to feed it. The Empire also provided the Collective with a
never ending stream of dramatic narratives that served to keep the attention of
the Collective focused on it, on something other than itself.
There had been another group, wild cards, the descendants
of the ancient people who had launched themselves into the cosmos long before
the Collective had been constructed, long before the Continuum had been
imagined, and long before the first vestiges of the Empire had taken shape.
They had all been discovered, tracked down, brought into
the Empire or destroyed, all except one, the small colony on the tiny blue
planet, Earth.
It was remote, on the other side of the galaxy, it was
technologically stunted and did not represent a threat to the Continuum at all.
The defensive systems of the HomeWorld were automated,
but still required thought, and they collapsed in shock when the crises struck.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
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