The green-filled capsules seemed to go on forever. The dimmed light in the smeeting chambers made the rows of incubators seem to stretch on into the darkness in every direction. Each row of capsules was suspended from gleaming twisted black metal frames like ripening fruits on a vine. But this was no ordinary vineyard. Each capsule contained in it's fizzy liquid interior, a developing irken fetus. As Red stared out into space, he noticed a robot arm snatch one of the ripe capsules from the black vines, and practically freefall into the shadows towards the hatching platform. Leaning over the rail of the floating transport platform, he watched the metal appendage disappear into the darkness.
"Watch your step, sir. It's a long way down." The tech piloting the transport cautioned. She turned and glanced at what had caught her lord's attention, the scant light reflecting off a pair of low-light goggles. Her antennae twitched in realization. "Oh, well, it's funny you would notice that one. We've been monitoring that pod for some time now. It's been showing signs."
"'Signs?'"
Instead of explaining, she leaned onto the transport controls, and she and Red steadied themselves as the platform came to life again. It lowered down to the floor of the chamber, and sped across the white metal surface at breakneck speed.
"Permission to speak, sir?"
"Granted." Red replied from his uneasy seat in the back of the platform. He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a bag of snack chips, and started munching loudly on them.
"Sir, where is Almighty Tallest Purple? Wasn't he supposed to accompany you?"
"He's preoccupied with other matters concerning the empire, smeet tech." Red replied irritably through a mouthful of chips. "Now let's hurry up and get this over with."
"Yes, sir." Her reply was hard, and Red noticed a twinge of antipathy in her voice that made him stop chewing. What had he done to her to make her sound like that?
As they neared the hatching platform, the transport platform slowed to a crawl. The hatching platform was nothing more than a large metal basin, lined with black padding to prevent injuring the smeet. As the tech and Red jumped off the transport platform, the robot arm that had plucked the incubator from it's vine whizzed overhead, and stopped over he basin, slowly lowering itself until the capsule was only a foot from the rubbery surface. As Red hovered up the sides of the basin, the clear upper hemisphere of the platform emerged from the sides and closed over it with a hissing sound, forming a sphere of black metal and glass. The tech followed him, and looked down into the basin though the glass.
"This one would've been a diplomat. He even had an empathic thread." The tech pulled up her goggles and glanced up at Red, blinking violet eyes. "Like you."
"...I don't see what the problem is here, smeet tech. You called upon the Tallests for a REASON, right?" Red said. He was right. Nothing LOOKED wrong. But there was something strangely... mournful... about the tech's behavior. She glanced sadly around her and beckoned with a red-gloved hand. Quickly and quietly, she and Red were joined on the rim of the smeeting platform by a company of steel-faced irkens in tech uniforms.
He turned to ask, but the tech just pointed at the capsule in the dome, which was now being broken. The smeet's limp body slid from the tube and hit the rubbery surface in a pool of green fluid. It stayed motionless as another arm appeared and affixed a life-support pak to it's back. A shock of electricity surged through the little green creature, and it lurched onto it's side, it's eyes glassy.
The tech just stood, staring at the smeet. An uneasy silence had filled the area.
Then, the smeet blinked. It lurched one, and rolled over.
"See? There's nothing wrong--" Red started to reassure the tech, but she was still staring at the smeet in the dome. Her eyes were full of pain.
"Look closer, my liege."
Blinking and looking back though the dome, he saw the smeet sit up. The tiny irken's head hung limply at the neck, like it had been broken. It's eyes were still glassy, and it's jaw was misaligned. As it struggled to stand, it's knee wrenched in the wrong direction, pulled out of alignment by a malformed muscle. The smeet screamed, and fell to it's side, landing in the pool of green fluid it was once suspended in.
"What the prak?? What's wrong with him?" Red asked, glued to the sight in morbid confusion.
"We wish we knew..." The tech replied, her voice low and shaking. Sullen, she reached around behind her and pulled the cover off a large red button on a podium-sized control panel. Her limp hand depressed the button, and an orange gas rushed into the dome. The smeet screamed again, and started coughing.
Red didn't stop staring at the dome until the coughing stopped. "How many of these have there been?" Was all he could choke out.
The tech turned and looked at him, blinking back thick glycerine-based tears. "Every smeet in the past two weeks. It seems like all the pods are showing signs now, and we don't know what's wrong! Even the logicians can't figure anything out..."
Red looked at her. She was about ready to break down, he realized. For two weeks, all she had done was destroy smeets. She was the only one authorized to do such a thing, and it was taking it's toll on her. "I'll have the chambers closed for a few days. That way, I can consult with my co-tallest, and maybe we can figure something out..."
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded drained, but Red was sure she was thankful. He turned and hovered back towards the platform, not hearing the tech say. "Irk help us; It's actually happening. Minari may have been right, after all..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Purple?"
Purple whipped around from the data screen he had been staring at for the past half an hour. "I was wondering if you were going to make it." The media room was small, and dim, with little furniture save for the ruined irkenomic task chair and battered media console. It looked to be the complete antithesis of the lavish personal library that they had used last time. The dull violet glow from Purple's power armor played along the dingy walls, stuggling with the glowing text on the screen for supremacy as the main sorce of light in the room. This was an information lockdown chamber; the grey walls seemed to be stained from the text that had reflected off of it over the years. Information that didn't want to be known, shouldn't be known, but was found out anyway. The only sounds in the room now were the rumbling of an air duct in the ceiling and the humming of Red's hoverskirt. Red stood there in the doorway to the media room, sucking on a raspberry cooler. He hovered in, the door sliding shut behind him with a dull hiss.
"So, what was wrong with the smeeting chamber?" Purple continued, almost at a whisper.
"That's just it. They don't know what's wrong. We've got about 80 dead smeets down there, each one defective." Purple's jaw dropped. "That's every one in the past two weeks. I even saw them destroy another one while I was there." Red stopped and shook his head. He didn't want to remember that. "If they knew what was wrong, they would've fixed it by now."
"Did you order the camber deactivated?" Purple asked quickly.
"For three days. I have no idea what else to do. All the logicians in the Empire can't figure it out."
"Then we'll just have to keep it deactivated, until we figure out what's wrong..." Purple leaned back in his chair, his antennae falling backward, running a spindly green claw over his violet eyes. "3000 years of smooth operation, and the smeeting chamber had to mess up NOW?"
Red stared at the walls of the tiny media room. The red glow from his armor, along with Purple's, cast an uneasy flickering shade of magenta on the walls. The light from the monitor was completely drowned out. "...So, what about you?"
"I cut the meeting with the theology techs short. They're starting to suspect something. They weren't telling me anything I hadn't already read, anyway. The in's and out's of the ceremony, how the seed's going to be carried, what's going to happen on Earth. Blah, blah, blah. So I came here, trying to find something new. So far, nothing."
Red's eyes narrowed. Should he tell him about he strange treatise he'd discovered in the library? He hadn't before. It was too stupid-sounding at the time. Made no sense to him. But now that everything else had been researched, with only a few actual FACTS between them, they were starting to get desperate. "Hey, Purple, I've been reading a set of biology treatises in the library. Maybe you should--"
"Biology treatises!? Red, are you actually READING those? Those papers were written by a crackpot smeet tech that had too much time on her hands and no real contact with the Control Brain!" Red narrowed an eye at him, his antennae twitching irritably. "Don't look so suprised. I read those so-called "Devastis Factor" papers in a crazy-people studies class at the Acadamy. The author was a case study. A real nutjob. What was her name? Minari? Went as far as to say that the Control Brain was keeping us weak by keeping us short, or something like that." Purple chuckled slightly.
Red leaned on the desk, looking down at Purple, still slightly annoyed at being shot down. "You remember what they said happend to her?"
"She was reprogrammed a long time ago."
Red sighed in frustration, standing up and slurping his cooler again. Reprogrammed. She may as well be dead, he thought to himself. Oh, she was still around somewhere, but she was a completely different irken now. No memories of her past life. Not a clue as to what she was before. There were no records to research, either. The Control Brain itself handled all reprogrammings, and gave no records. The better to seperate them from their old lives. "Can you just open the file and read it again? If you're right, I'll agree with you, say she's crazy, and then we can go eat food."
Purple sighed. "Alright." He held his claw over the control plate, and searched for the papers. It took a painfully long time, the white noise from the airduct offering little comfort. Studying the humming sound, Red noticed a wierd hissing noise accompanying it. It was coming from Purple's respirator. Purple blinked, his face starting to pale a bit, beads of sweat starting to run down his face.
"Pur? Are you all right?"
Pulling a shaking claw away from the control plate, he leaned back in his chair, and shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. "Yeah... I'm just fine..." He said, quickly standing up. His resperator stopped hissing. "Why don't you take a look at that file instead. I've been here so long, I'm getting dizzy. I'm going back to the bridge. See you there." Purple said everything in one breath, backing out of the room like he expected a slaughering rat creature to leap out from behind Red and tear his windpipe out. He leaned against the doorway for a second, still unsteady, and turned down the hallway before Red could reply. The light from his armor once again fighting against the light from the text on the screen. This time, it was losing.
"What was the matter with him?"
"Watch your step, sir. It's a long way down." The tech piloting the transport cautioned. She turned and glanced at what had caught her lord's attention, the scant light reflecting off a pair of low-light goggles. Her antennae twitched in realization. "Oh, well, it's funny you would notice that one. We've been monitoring that pod for some time now. It's been showing signs."
"'Signs?'"
Instead of explaining, she leaned onto the transport controls, and she and Red steadied themselves as the platform came to life again. It lowered down to the floor of the chamber, and sped across the white metal surface at breakneck speed.
"Permission to speak, sir?"
"Granted." Red replied from his uneasy seat in the back of the platform. He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a bag of snack chips, and started munching loudly on them.
"Sir, where is Almighty Tallest Purple? Wasn't he supposed to accompany you?"
"He's preoccupied with other matters concerning the empire, smeet tech." Red replied irritably through a mouthful of chips. "Now let's hurry up and get this over with."
"Yes, sir." Her reply was hard, and Red noticed a twinge of antipathy in her voice that made him stop chewing. What had he done to her to make her sound like that?
As they neared the hatching platform, the transport platform slowed to a crawl. The hatching platform was nothing more than a large metal basin, lined with black padding to prevent injuring the smeet. As the tech and Red jumped off the transport platform, the robot arm that had plucked the incubator from it's vine whizzed overhead, and stopped over he basin, slowly lowering itself until the capsule was only a foot from the rubbery surface. As Red hovered up the sides of the basin, the clear upper hemisphere of the platform emerged from the sides and closed over it with a hissing sound, forming a sphere of black metal and glass. The tech followed him, and looked down into the basin though the glass.
"This one would've been a diplomat. He even had an empathic thread." The tech pulled up her goggles and glanced up at Red, blinking violet eyes. "Like you."
"...I don't see what the problem is here, smeet tech. You called upon the Tallests for a REASON, right?" Red said. He was right. Nothing LOOKED wrong. But there was something strangely... mournful... about the tech's behavior. She glanced sadly around her and beckoned with a red-gloved hand. Quickly and quietly, she and Red were joined on the rim of the smeeting platform by a company of steel-faced irkens in tech uniforms.
He turned to ask, but the tech just pointed at the capsule in the dome, which was now being broken. The smeet's limp body slid from the tube and hit the rubbery surface in a pool of green fluid. It stayed motionless as another arm appeared and affixed a life-support pak to it's back. A shock of electricity surged through the little green creature, and it lurched onto it's side, it's eyes glassy.
The tech just stood, staring at the smeet. An uneasy silence had filled the area.
Then, the smeet blinked. It lurched one, and rolled over.
"See? There's nothing wrong--" Red started to reassure the tech, but she was still staring at the smeet in the dome. Her eyes were full of pain.
"Look closer, my liege."
Blinking and looking back though the dome, he saw the smeet sit up. The tiny irken's head hung limply at the neck, like it had been broken. It's eyes were still glassy, and it's jaw was misaligned. As it struggled to stand, it's knee wrenched in the wrong direction, pulled out of alignment by a malformed muscle. The smeet screamed, and fell to it's side, landing in the pool of green fluid it was once suspended in.
"What the prak?? What's wrong with him?" Red asked, glued to the sight in morbid confusion.
"We wish we knew..." The tech replied, her voice low and shaking. Sullen, she reached around behind her and pulled the cover off a large red button on a podium-sized control panel. Her limp hand depressed the button, and an orange gas rushed into the dome. The smeet screamed again, and started coughing.
Red didn't stop staring at the dome until the coughing stopped. "How many of these have there been?" Was all he could choke out.
The tech turned and looked at him, blinking back thick glycerine-based tears. "Every smeet in the past two weeks. It seems like all the pods are showing signs now, and we don't know what's wrong! Even the logicians can't figure anything out..."
Red looked at her. She was about ready to break down, he realized. For two weeks, all she had done was destroy smeets. She was the only one authorized to do such a thing, and it was taking it's toll on her. "I'll have the chambers closed for a few days. That way, I can consult with my co-tallest, and maybe we can figure something out..."
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded drained, but Red was sure she was thankful. He turned and hovered back towards the platform, not hearing the tech say. "Irk help us; It's actually happening. Minari may have been right, after all..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Purple?"
Purple whipped around from the data screen he had been staring at for the past half an hour. "I was wondering if you were going to make it." The media room was small, and dim, with little furniture save for the ruined irkenomic task chair and battered media console. It looked to be the complete antithesis of the lavish personal library that they had used last time. The dull violet glow from Purple's power armor played along the dingy walls, stuggling with the glowing text on the screen for supremacy as the main sorce of light in the room. This was an information lockdown chamber; the grey walls seemed to be stained from the text that had reflected off of it over the years. Information that didn't want to be known, shouldn't be known, but was found out anyway. The only sounds in the room now were the rumbling of an air duct in the ceiling and the humming of Red's hoverskirt. Red stood there in the doorway to the media room, sucking on a raspberry cooler. He hovered in, the door sliding shut behind him with a dull hiss.
"So, what was wrong with the smeeting chamber?" Purple continued, almost at a whisper.
"That's just it. They don't know what's wrong. We've got about 80 dead smeets down there, each one defective." Purple's jaw dropped. "That's every one in the past two weeks. I even saw them destroy another one while I was there." Red stopped and shook his head. He didn't want to remember that. "If they knew what was wrong, they would've fixed it by now."
"Did you order the camber deactivated?" Purple asked quickly.
"For three days. I have no idea what else to do. All the logicians in the Empire can't figure it out."
"Then we'll just have to keep it deactivated, until we figure out what's wrong..." Purple leaned back in his chair, his antennae falling backward, running a spindly green claw over his violet eyes. "3000 years of smooth operation, and the smeeting chamber had to mess up NOW?"
Red stared at the walls of the tiny media room. The red glow from his armor, along with Purple's, cast an uneasy flickering shade of magenta on the walls. The light from the monitor was completely drowned out. "...So, what about you?"
"I cut the meeting with the theology techs short. They're starting to suspect something. They weren't telling me anything I hadn't already read, anyway. The in's and out's of the ceremony, how the seed's going to be carried, what's going to happen on Earth. Blah, blah, blah. So I came here, trying to find something new. So far, nothing."
Red's eyes narrowed. Should he tell him about he strange treatise he'd discovered in the library? He hadn't before. It was too stupid-sounding at the time. Made no sense to him. But now that everything else had been researched, with only a few actual FACTS between them, they were starting to get desperate. "Hey, Purple, I've been reading a set of biology treatises in the library. Maybe you should--"
"Biology treatises!? Red, are you actually READING those? Those papers were written by a crackpot smeet tech that had too much time on her hands and no real contact with the Control Brain!" Red narrowed an eye at him, his antennae twitching irritably. "Don't look so suprised. I read those so-called "Devastis Factor" papers in a crazy-people studies class at the Acadamy. The author was a case study. A real nutjob. What was her name? Minari? Went as far as to say that the Control Brain was keeping us weak by keeping us short, or something like that." Purple chuckled slightly.
Red leaned on the desk, looking down at Purple, still slightly annoyed at being shot down. "You remember what they said happend to her?"
"She was reprogrammed a long time ago."
Red sighed in frustration, standing up and slurping his cooler again. Reprogrammed. She may as well be dead, he thought to himself. Oh, she was still around somewhere, but she was a completely different irken now. No memories of her past life. Not a clue as to what she was before. There were no records to research, either. The Control Brain itself handled all reprogrammings, and gave no records. The better to seperate them from their old lives. "Can you just open the file and read it again? If you're right, I'll agree with you, say she's crazy, and then we can go eat food."
Purple sighed. "Alright." He held his claw over the control plate, and searched for the papers. It took a painfully long time, the white noise from the airduct offering little comfort. Studying the humming sound, Red noticed a wierd hissing noise accompanying it. It was coming from Purple's respirator. Purple blinked, his face starting to pale a bit, beads of sweat starting to run down his face.
"Pur? Are you all right?"
Pulling a shaking claw away from the control plate, he leaned back in his chair, and shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. "Yeah... I'm just fine..." He said, quickly standing up. His resperator stopped hissing. "Why don't you take a look at that file instead. I've been here so long, I'm getting dizzy. I'm going back to the bridge. See you there." Purple said everything in one breath, backing out of the room like he expected a slaughering rat creature to leap out from behind Red and tear his windpipe out. He leaned against the doorway for a second, still unsteady, and turned down the hallway before Red could reply. The light from his armor once again fighting against the light from the text on the screen. This time, it was losing.
"What was the matter with him?"