Chapter 57: Hyper Evolutionary Paradox
A heptagonal shaped doorway of light was opened, which lead to the inner sanctum of the Era Agents' Era Agency. Seconds after the door had been opened, a limping Bubbles struggled through the door and was guided onto a medical stretcher. Once two medics hoisted Bubbles up and into the stretcher, they then quickly transported their wounded Era Agent to the Era Agency's infirmary. Bubbles groaned in pain while he suffered several broken bones and a lacerated rib cage. Worse still, he had to remain awake as the doctors and medics came to his side. He had to have a blood test performed from a sample of his blood, and it was a test that he dreaded.
"Alrighty then..." One of the gilanian doctors said, standing over Bubbles and inspecting his form. "Ultra-suit, open frontal straps and reveal wearer." After saying that command, Bubbles' body was exposed as the suit he was in opened up. The doctor then stabbed a thin needle into Bubbles' arm and pulled cherry liquid from a vein. After procuring the fluid, he handed it to a nearby nurse. "Have this analyzed in our science lab. Orders from Seneschal Zagion."
The nurse nodded and took the blood-filled needle before scurrying off somewhere else. Bubbles groaned in pain as a medic felt his arm and groped his flesh to see what kind of damage was applied to the bones underneath. "Doctor Pashaq. Will... I be alright?"
The doctor that handed the needle to the nurse looked back at Bubbles and sighed. "It's too early to tell. Zagion will be here soon for your debriefing. Think you can stay awake long enough to answer some of his questions?"
Bubbles paused for a few seconds before he gave his answer. "... I can, yes."
Another doctor came up to Bubbles and held some kind of medical scanning device over Bubbles' body. After a few seconds of scanning, this other doctor shook his head. "Twelve... Twenty four... Thirty nine broken bones, a contortion in the ligaments of the left ankle and knee, lacerated scales in the right pectoral breast, with the cartilage and rib cage underneath suffering heavy displacement, misalignment, and further laceration. You didn't suffer any compound fractures, but your leg is in very bad shape and might develop a rip if it bends too far. I'm also detecting spinal compression fractures, internal bleeding, and slight hemorrhaging in the brain and eardrums, suggesting that you were in the middle of an explosive shockwave. The ultra suit must have mitigated a lot of that damage before its outer and inner layers of magic armor finally short-circuited. You're lucky to be alive."
"That remains to be seen." The doctors and nurses took a brief pause to look at the newcomer that entered the room before continuing their work. Zagion had entered into the room, his fat waddling making heavy steps as he approached Bubbles. Zagion carefully inspected the wounds done to his top Era Agent, and also inspected the condition of Bubbles' ultra suit. Zagion sighed after he looked over the damage. "I reviewed the video files that was stored on your ultra suit, Bulschtein. I have to say, I am very surprised by these turn of events."
Bubbles sighed, slowly shifting as he had his arm put into a cast. It was thanks to the ultra suit that he was able to move and fight Kay in that underground chamber. Now, however, his ultra suit exposed his body and revealed many injuries that crippled him. "Are you still convinced that... I am the zerg's mole?"
Zagion sighed again and shook his head. "Perhaps not intentionally." He went to find a nearby chair and brought it close to Bubbles' bedside. He sat down on it once he placed it down. "Our informant has told us all the relevant information they knew about the zerg organisms, and their capacity to evolve, adapt, and mutate in response to whatever threat threatens them. However, even our informant is scratching their head over the information we relayed to them. We suspected that the zerg have pulled off a recursion protocol, and it's only now we can confirm that our suspicions were true. Somehow, they temporally recursed from a locked timeline, which resulted in the creation of an alternate timeline, which is the one we are currently in. How they did it without alerting the Era Agency in that timeline, or how they were able to operate and create a time gate without triggering our sensors in this timeline, is a mystery to us."
Bubbles sighed. "Would that mean Kay didn't send himself back in time, but rather... has used some redundancy or loophole that kept his original past intact?"
Zagion paused, but then nodded. "It's likely. It would normally take about two thousand and five hundred days to create a time gate that grants access to an alternate timeline without affecting the original. But with the information we received from our informant, the zerg have the capability to evolve much more quickly than any other species we know of. What would take several generations for a family to adapt to their environment would take the zerg literal hours to do the same. To create an alternate timeline, the variance between events in the past would have to have little effect on the newly formed alternate timeline. Too many variables will effect the entry, and creation, of the alternate timeline, which would produce an abundance of temporal radiation. For example, if you were to go into the past a couple seconds from now and you touched your past self, the both of you would merge into a singularity and cease existing. ... At least in theory."
Bubbles winced and shook his head. "I have seen... it happen before sir. I don't want to bore you on the details, but... it's not exactly a pretty thing to see."
Zagion nodded. "I'll take your word on that." He then pointed at Bubbles. "Say, has the doctors taken your blood yet?"
The doctor responsible for taking Bubbles' blood replied. "I have sir. It's being analyzed in our science lab right now. We should be getting a result in the foreseeable future."
Zagion nodded again. "Good. Continue as you were then."
Bubbles groaned as he waved to get Zagion's attention. "Sir. What about... What about that new zerg organism? That slug thing with the arms?"
Zagion sighed, shaking his head. "Our informant has no information on it either. But on the plus side, we have agreed to call this new beast a 'spider slug'. We don't know what it does, but we and the informant are in agreement that it can't be any good for us."
A hurried nurse came into the infirmary that was servicing Bubbles. A graven expression was plastered across her face, which could only mean that she was carrying terrible news. "Um... Excuse me sirs. I have came back with the blood test." Zagion, Bubbles, and the doctors and nurses by his side turned to look at the nurse. She reached for an electronic clipboard and accessed several images to show her peers what the test revealed. "The scientists have discovered several kinds of bacteria and viruses in his system. I regret to inform you that your blood has been tested positive of zerg infestation."
Bubbles stared at the nurse for a long while, then began staring at the ceiling for several seconds before tears welled in his eyes. "..."
The doctors and nurses slowly backed away from Bubbles. "... Right. Uh... We need to quarantine the area immediately. Seneschal Zagion, I request that you leave this area posthaste." The doctor that took the sample of Bubbles' blood said.
Zagion sighed as he got up. "Looks like I'm not needed here. Have him guarded by some armed men, and give me an update on his condition every twenty minutes. I'll have an engineer create an impervious containment area so our resident scientists can get to analyzing his symptoms and his rate of infection. If he starts getting crazy, you have my permission to terminate him. Everybody got that?"
The doctors and nurses paused and looked at one another before they turned back to Zagion and nodded their answer.
Zagion nodded back at them. "Good. I'm going to the science bay now to tell the scientists to clear their schedules. They have some blood samples to analyze." After saluting to them all, he turned and left the infirmary.
Bubbles felt indifferent. Due to the events currently happening in this timeline, he knew then that the zerg had inexplicably changed. After all, he had just discovered that he contracted a dangerous sickness,\ and became host to the insidious hyper-evolutionary virus, or 'zerg virus' as the gilanians seemed so insistent to call it. He knew that there were many more gilanians that became pawns to the zerg organisms, but he knew not how it could manifest itself to infect and spread to more victims, eventually turning them into disposable soldiers. He felt dead inside, and terrified at the same time. It was similar to the feeling of getting a terminal illness, except it was infinitely worse in his opinion. He knew not what will happen next.
Zagion paced back and forth behind his desk in his office. Worry and doubt filled his soul, and he was conflicted with what he had to do. He couldn't do what he knew he needed to do. He couldn't kill Bubbles. The infected agent was a top asset to the Era Agency, and losing him would result in a significant loss to him and the agents he commands. He could fall back to using the temporal recursion technique and send Bubbles back in time, where he could transfer information in his brain chip to a different Bubbles, and give the past Bubbles a chance to rewrite the timeline so that certain events could play out in the way they wanted. But then there was the information that the informant had shared with Zagion, and the Golden Star Empire, that the infestors, or 'spawners', could use their neural parasites to dominate machines, vehicles, and robots.
If the zerg could do that, then there was no telling what the virus would do to a brain chip inside an Era Agent's head. Zagion had no idea what the HEV was doing to the brain chip inside of Bubble's body, and he was worried on what kind of answer he would receive if he had the chance to ask about such possibilities. It was because of these factors and variables that Zagion had no idea on how to proceed without complicating matters even more than intended.
A knock on the door distracted Zagion from his thoughts. He paused before he went to his desk to sit down behind it. "Come in." A scientist in a white jacket, a fancy set of glasses that had multiple rotating lenses, and a mechanically operated prosthetic arm entered into Zagion's private office. He brought with him a digitized plastic sheet that supposedly contained the information he had researched and uncovered. "Ah! Yoval. It's been half an hour since I last saw you. How have you been?"
"It's been at least two years for me, more or less." Yoval replied, setting himself onto a chair in front of Zagion's desk and sighing.
"Two years?" Zagion said with incredulity. "When I gave you permission to dilate time in your work space, I was expecting you to complete your work in a few months from your perspective. Why did your research take you years to finish your task?"
Yoval sighed, tiredness in his voice. "It's been an arduous task. I have spent much of my time researching the zerg virus extensively. It's been quite a long while that I socialized with everyone outside my laboratory. However, now that you mentioned the virus, there are things regarding it that I need to tell you about. The DNA and RNA patterns that is packed within those viruses is... well... quite frightening, actually."
"Frightening?" Zagion repeated, tilting his head. "Apart from the zerg?"
Yoval looked at Zagion, chuckled, and then shook his head. "Well... Perhaps equally as frightening."
Zagion smiled and leaned back in his seat. "So what have you discovered on your zerg virus research? I'm genuinely curious."
Yoval nodded, but his smile disappeared. "I am afraid that what I have uncovered might disturb you. Can I use your head office's video screen to show you my findings?"
Zagion waved a gesture to Yoval with agreeance and nodded, allowing that permission to be granted. Yoval walked to the side of the room and accessed a control panel that was connected to a large, black rectangle on the side of the wall. After playing with its controls, he activated the wall screen that began to show a larger resolution of the image on the plastic sheet he had in his arms. Afterwards, Yoval opened up an image file which showed a white background with several irregular, almost geometric cell-shaped objects that held black cores within themselves. The surface of these large cells contained several translucent tendrils that were tipped with black spikes on their ends. They appeared to be fencing against one another, from a glance. Another, larger shape was seen which consisted of a multicellular design, with each cell also having multiple black cores that surrounded several more cores within itself. Some of the cells were dismantled by the fencing cells, while others had their cores replaced by either a fencing black-cored cells, the multicellular masses that produced more black-cored cells, or cells that already had their black-core implant and is implanting another core in another cell. Zagion narrowed his eyes at the displayed images. "What exactly am I seeing here?"
"Microbial evolution, sir." Yoval answered. "Apparently, this multicellular virus you see here, on the far left and within its own image, and I theorize it contains genetic blueprints for every zerg monster we have currently categorized. Supposedly, each black core you see contains the necessary DNA and RNA patterns to create any zerg organism that we know of, and more. I believe the information that the informant has imparted with us describes this multi-cell viral organism as the 'Mutation Factory' cells."
Zagion stared wide-eyed at the multicellular virus. "A multicellular virus that can create mutations, and can recreate the different breeds of zerg organism? That actually sounds... quite dangerous."
Yoval nodded. "Indeed, but none are so dangerous as the 'Mutation Predator' cells. They are specifically designed to counteract the immune system of the body they entered, eventually replacing all white blood cells within the victim and changing the bone marrow's properties to produce more Mutation Predator cells and Mutation Factory cells. Once the bone marrow is completely converted, the MP cells and MF cells will begin targeting every other cell. Muscle cells, fat cells, brain cells, nerve cells, blood cells, and even cells in the scutes and scales. The zerg viruses quickly infests the remaining cells within the body, using the bloodstream. After contracting the virus, the victim will start displaying physical symptoms."
Zagion sighed and rolled his neck. "So what happens when someone contracts the zerg virus anyway? Tell me what happens, step-by-step."
"Okay, well, I found out something very interesting during my tests, but I can tell you about the development of the zerg virus and its symptoms first." Yoval said, nodding and selecting a different image to show Zagion. This new image was of a gilanian in a medical gown. "Now, this is my first patient, Hornthel. I used some of the blood that was extracted from Bulschtein to infect this individual to see what symptoms might develop after contracting with the zerg virus. Early symptoms were not immediate. Despite the several cases of gilanians developing extreme physical symptoms in the first few minutes of contracting the zerg virus, it was within the first few hours that Hornthel developed a few noticeable symptoms. The symptoms were malaise, loss of appetite, restlessness, despondency, and accumulative depression. The violent swelling in the abdominal region seems to only occur when the host's body is already inhabited by medical micro-machines. I can only assume that people with incredibly efficient kidneys and liver, which can quickly flush out the medical micro-machines from their bodies, are exempt from the painful abdominal swelling.
"Anyway, these symptoms will continue to develop until the victim no longer responds to any outward stimuli. However, there are also other symptoms that occur within the body. The development of tumors, sores, pustules, and several different types of spine and abnormal muscular tissue growths alters the body at a slow pace. Sometime after twenty four hours have passed, these growths become visible on the victims' body, and protrudes from it. Tentacles would extrude from the mouth, tooth-like orifices would grow on the swelling that occurs in the antebrachium, the part of the arm that is between the hand and the elbow, and would shoot out teeth using a pressurized venom gland near the top of the wrist." Yoval said, pointing to his own arm.
"Venom glands on the wrists? I thought the capability to produce venom became a recessive trait after a family of gilanians lived through several generations of docility? Once farming and livestock raising became the norm, using venom to hunt for prey, or deter predators, fell out of practice in later years." Zagion said, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, the zerg virus changes the DNA of the gilanian victims quite rapidly. It would make sense that it would focus favorable traits, or shift a body part to a different location, to weaponize the zerg infested gilanian victims into disposable pawns. Hence where their name comes from, I suppose." Yoval answered.
Zagion nodded and sighed, leaning forward on his desk. "What I would like to know is if there is a way we could cure this virus. I would like to have Bulschtein fit and healthy for his next mission."
Yoval shook his head. "I'm afraid that won't be possible."
Zagion grunted and grimaced. "Then what do I keep you around for? I know that the zerg virus is very contagious and dangerous, but it shouldn't mean that it is incurable."
Yoval shook his head more and sighed. "I apologize for what I will say to you, sir, but there is no method at our disposal that will enable your top agent from ever being free from the virus ever again. The virus simply evolves too fast to create an effective cure."
Zagion furrowed his brow at Yoval. He then sighed afterwards. "... Seems like we have no other option but to try using temporal recursion to fix this problem. If we can't cure it using conventional methods, then we have no other choice but to use more unconventional methods."
Yoval shook his head even more, approached Zagion's desk, and slapped his data sheet onto his table. "No no no, don't do that! When I said that there is no method at OUR disposal of freeing Agent Bulschtein from the zerg virus, I literally meant it."
Zagion tilted his head and raised a scaly eyebrow. "... Care to explain that to me?"
Yoval sighed and nodded. "Yes sir. It's actually something that I need to share with you, and it very well concerns the Era Agency." Yoval went back to the rectangular screen and opened up several video files of several different blood samples. Looking at the different dates and timestamps in each recording, each instance took place in a different timeline. Zagion raised his eyebrow even more when he noticed the timestamps. Yoval directed Zagion's attention to the oldest recordings. "When I was analyzing several gilanians that was displaying certain physical allergic reactions after contracting the zerg virus, I noticed this physical reaction taking place within gilanians that had medical micro-machines swimming in their blood, and embedded within their cellular structure. I decided to transfer my notes to a past self of myself. That was when I noticed that I was running out of patients, using temporal recursion. However, it was at that point that I have discovered some intriguing energy fluctuations within the bodies of the gilanian test subjects."
Zagion squinted. "Energy fluctuations? Of what kind?"
Yoval paused for dramatic effect before he revealed his answer. "Tachyon radiation and temporal energy." He said slowly.
Zagion stared at Yoval. "... Wha... But temporal energy is used to power the time gates, and tachyon radiation is just an inert half-life byproduct of decaying temporal radiation."
Yoval turned to the screen to fasten the recorded video feeds to different times. After resuming the feeds normally, Zagion could see vibrating particles of white surround the various virus cells. After the viruses were surrounded by the white particles, they vanished in a flash of white. In the other video images, the zerg HEV flashed into existence. Yoval begun to explain what was happening. "It took me a bit of time to gather these video images, but it resulted in some unusual research that took an entire year to understand. I have discovered that the viruses are able to produce a tachyon shell around themselves, and this tachyon radiation shell quickly builds up in energy until they are completely enveloped by it. After which, the tachyon shell collapses into a short-lived burst of temporal energy, making the viruses disappear. Usually, one out of a hundred million of these viruses have these tachyon shells form around them."
Zagion got up and went to the rectangular screen on his wall. He eyed at the various feeds for several seconds before he turned toward Yoval with a concerned expression. "... If this is what I think it means..."
Yoval nodded, with a graver expression than before. "Time traveling viruses. Apparently, the zerg viruses have somehow became sensitive to any changes made in the timeline, somehow becoming sensitive to tachyon ripples that originate in the zerg's past. If they sense that the victim which contracted them is about to have their history changed, such as someone going into the past to prevent somebody else from contracting the virus in the first place, the virus forms tachyon shells around themselves, creating a small burst of temporal energy that transports themselves to any new, adjacent timeline. The temporal radiation that bleeds into the surrounding background radiation is so minimally small that we weren't able to detect it at first."
Zagion shook his head. "So... So our time travel methods are incapable of reversing contraction of the zerg virus?"
Yoval sighed and nodded. "I tried, in a contained environment, several methods of using time travel to enact a system of prevention. Using the overriding timeline method produces unfavorable results. The duration it would take for myself to send data into the past to overwrite the future would still produce victims relative to the timeline till it reaches its expiration. In essence, any patients that I have had scheduled to contract the zerg virus after transferring my notes and information to my past self wouldn't carry over to the overriding timeline, but only if I made the time jump overwrite before those patients became infected with the viruses.
"Using a dynamic timeline proved to be completely useless. In one test, an assistant was sent back in time after I had accomplished my goal of infecting a patient with the zerg virus. A stable loophole paradox was intentionally created, and one of my assistants was tasked to inform me and his past self to refrain from infecting the patient with the zerg virus, and he told them to create the loophole to send his past self back into the past, which would inform their past selves to stop my attempt to infect the patient with the virus, and he would then inform them to send their assistant into the past, etcetera etcetera. Sadly, the initial infestation of the patient superseded the time loop stability. To maintain the time loop, we still went ahead and had my assistants across time continue to be ambiguous in order to keep the circle dynamic, and have them return back to seconds after the moment they traveled back.
"And finally, I tested the capabilities of using a splitting timeline. Needless to say, it is dangerous. Much more dangerous than you would realize too! Patients and victims from both timelines would contract the zerg virus at the same time, relative to the very moment of contraction. To put it shortly, the virus can 'time-jump' to their alternate hosts in their other timelines. From my research that I had conducted in my past two years in my contained laboratory, I will say that this is truly a unique adaptation that the zerg organisms developed."
Zagion rubbed his face with a palm and turned away from Yoval, his body language seemingly becoming tense. "Do we know if this adaptation is present in the other zerg organisms? Like the blade hounds and the pukers?"
Yoval shook his head. "The informant doesn't have any information pertaining to any data of that regard. As far as we know, this is a trait that is wholly unique to gilanians turning into pawns for the zerg, and my research was extensively focused on the the gilanian pawns only."
Zagion nodded. "Then it's worth a shot to attack the zerg organisms early in the conflict. We will need to take careful watch of any gilanian populations that have been affected by any zerg incursion, and kill anyone that has been turned into zerg pawns, or will turn into them."
Yoval sighed. "You are willing to kill someone before they turn into pawns? That will weigh heavily on anybody's consciousness. And it sounds costly to our resources."
Zagion grunted. "I'm not too proud to enact such a harsh measure that culls all parties in every afflicted timeline, but it's the only one that is the most efficient in this scenario." Zagion said, resting back behind his desk and sitting back down in his desk chair. "But on the plus side, Bulschtein has taken a major figure out of play. With the bug-man beast-master gone, all that's left to deal with are the bugs and beasts." Zagion sighed and pleaded his finger together. "But more importantly, what about the virus' effect on brain-chips?"
Yoval sighed. "I'm afraid that, due to the adaptive nature of the zerg virus, the brain-chips within the body would eventually become affected. In several tests, I have noticed that mental degradation of the host slowly deteriorates the brain-chip's capacity to store information, or the information itself is somehow altered over time. In short, I can't recommend sending a brain-chip on its own into the past with a temporal recursion in place. At least, not the brain chip itself. I suggest using some kind of buffer that prevents the virus from infesting the brain-chip's system that would affect another brain-chip in a different timeline. Perhaps copying the data and then sending the intact data to a new, cleaner brain-chip would prevent the data from being corrupted with the zerg infestation?"
Zagion nodded. "It'll have to do. There might yet still be hope for Bulschtein. Have whatever information we can save from his brain-chip and download it in a contained file. After that, we then upload it into the recursion protocol for Bulschtein in the recursed timeline. If the brain chip is slowly being damaged by the zerg virus, we need to act fast if we are to transfer all vital information to our Era Agents in the past. To ensure out continuity on Kiln, we will need to do this quick."
A knock on the door was heard, followed by that very door opening into Zagion's office. An Era Agent with a paled face walked into the room and saluted to the men within. "Um... I apologize entering into the room when there is a meeting taking place, but... there has been a development."
Zagion huffed in annoyance. "Is there ALWAYS something developing nowadays? Whatever you have to report, make it quick."
The Era Agent fished out a sheet of plastic from his person and placed it on Zagion's desk. "I think you need to see this instead."
Zagion sighed and retrieved the sheet of plastic. After inspecting the images on the digital sheet, his eyes widened widely till they looked like they were going to leave his head. "..."
Apparently, the Era Agency in the future was warning the Era Agency in the present that a giant structure made of pure energy will be emerging from under Red Mountain in the coming days.
A/N: Is it too evil giving the zerg this kind of adaptation?