Title: Transhuman Aliens

Series Title: Mass Effect/ Eclipse Phase (MEEP)

Author: curiousyellow

COPYLEFT:

I don't own any IP involved in this work of fiction. Everything here should qualify as a parody. If you don't get the joke, then you're probably a lawyer. It is very dry humor. Also, I disavow the legitimacy of IP as a legitimate form of property. Do with this as you like. For more information, please read "Against Intellectual Monopoly" available for free at: (CENSORED BY SITE?).

METADATA:

This is a piece of fiction derived from the Eclipse Phase game I used to run. It's core theme: "What would happen if Transhumans from Eclipse Phase had their First Contact with the Space Opera Mass Effect setting during the Relay 314 Incident?" Continuity ends pretty much immediately, but people seem to think it's interesting anyway. If you hate this genre or kittens, you should leave immediately and go reread your Spock/Voldemort slash fics you love so much.

Eclipse Phase is amazing, check out their website: (CENSORED BY SITE?)

It is also CC-licensed, so PDF redistribution is permitted. Go google "eclipse phase pdf" and you can get a legal free copy for yourself.

SETTING NOTE: ASARI MIRRORING REFLEX
In order to bring the magically perfect Asari into EP, I redesigned their magic psychic powers to function using something much closer to EP core physics (not PSI). Instead, their head-flanges are effectively a large highly-sensitive electro-sensitive organ. Their mythic empathy powers are based on the "Asari Mirroring Reflex", where they involuntarily adjust themselves based on the surface emotional activity of their conversational partners. On the plus side, they know how you feel, on the down side, they experience a very stressful uncanny-valley response when dealing with something with a cyberbrain (from EP). In this story, the use of a tuned antenna can cause unpleasant sensations.

Look for more of these notes, where relevant. I may eventually collect them in a separate notes document.

Chapter 1:
Nos Astra 2145 CE (AF 25)

"Recorder On. Interview Log #0044-89. Identify present: Archivist Berena, Illium Citizens Wardi and Rotu." read Archivist Berena from rote memory, into a small hanging microphone in the middle of the Republic of Illium Intelligence Service (RIIS) interview room. Blandly efficient, the room consisted of all brushed metal furniture; a square table with four chairs arranged around it. Three chairs each held an Asari, two of which looked like nervous school-girls called into the principal's office. The remaining one, the Archivist, looked more bored than anything. She wore a shapeless gray one-piece suit, with a tiny gold pin on her collar depicting a stylized eye.
"When you and your mother, Matriarch Eastid, first brought these strange messages you've been receiving before me, I thought you were making it up. If I was rude before, it's only because we get a lot of false reports here at RIIS. There's SPAM out there thats particularly annoying, and which looks for all the world like the messages the two of you showed me."

The older of the two sisters, Wardi, nodded her head in agreement, while the younger pursed her lips and spoke, "You believe us now? What changed the from the first two times we tried to get you to look at this? You had security escort us out last time," she said leaning onto the table and pointing her finger accusingly at the Archivist. "...and would have again if we hadn't brought our mother to vouch for us! Aren't you supposed to look out for this crap?"

Wardi put her hand on her younger sisters back, interrupting with a low steady voice, "Which is why she just apologized Rotu. Look she even turned on the recorder this time, that means she's doing something official right?" She stared meaningfully at Berena.

"Of course," said Berena, "this interview is being recorded for later. If it contains anything useful about the Transhumans, we don't want to miss anything." Rotu sat back down looking smugly satisfied. "Now, the statement that you gave before, could you repeat it here for the recorder?"

Wardi leaned forward to carefully talk directly at the small microphone. "The two of us each received this message while we were at University, having lunch together. Our mother had sent us a link to the Household Digest article that they were going to publish from her, and while we were reading it, we simultaneously got that weird message about the Transhumans."

Rotu perked up at this point, apparently eager to share her half of the story. "Then I totally clicked on one of the links they sent us. Ten seconds later, and I wasn't on the Extranet anymore, but my browser was still working. It redirected me to a page that welcomed me to 'The Mesh'." She held out her browser, and pressed a button to bring the page up. "It's still working too, see? I just don't know how to browse it, all the addresses are messed up. When I punch in ExtraSearch, it gives me some kind of 'address not-found' message."

Berena looked from across the table, and indeed, the most used search engine on the Extranet was gone. When she reached across the table to try herself, the browser turned off. Her face screwed up in confusion, certain that she hadn't hit the off-switch on the side of the tablet-shaped browser. Pressing the power button did no good.
Flipping it over showed the battery was working as well. In frustration, she slid it back to Rotu, saying "Fix it."

As soon as Rotu touched it, the browser turned back on. Berena's eyes narrowed, and on a hunch, she quickly stood up, and poked the browser in Rotu's hands. While the girls both stared at this strange behavior from someone they had assumed to be an office drone, Berena only looked at the browser. It turned off at her touch again. Withdrawing her hand, it turned back on. She bit her lip staring at the browser.

"Listen girls, I need to go to the bathroom. Do you want anything to drink when I come back? I think we've got some Tupari in the fridge." Neither was interested, and they said as much. "Alright then, I'll be back in a little bit."

When Berena had closed the door, she rushed as fast as she dared in the narrow office hallway, and came to her office. Behind the hollow plastic of the door, lay the nest of towering papers and tablet-readers that she had accumulated since moving into an office with a real door. Upon entering, she pulled the door tightly shut, and locked it. Sitting down, she pulled the phone across the desk, from underneath a pile of old Tupari Sport cans, and quickly punched in a number she had recently memorized.

"Hello, RIIS Administrator Hheark's office, who may I ask is calling?" spoke a clearly too-articulate secretary.

"Tell Hheark that I'm calling, and its important. Interrupt his nap."

"I don't know what you're talking about or who you are..."

"Tell him that the Justicar's Project has a live lead!"

"Please hold..."

Seconds later, a groggy krogan voice answered, "What's so damn important that you're interrupting my beauty sleep? Keep in mind that I'm already past cranky and going on up to pissed if this is another stupid..."

"Hheark, quit, stop! I need a sweep team to confirm it, but I think I have a live lead on the Justicar's Project. They're down in interview room E."

"Fine. You'll get one in 15 minutes, but don't wake me back up unless they find something this time."

Roughly 15 minutes later, the two young asari were talking quietly in the interview room.

"I think she fell in," said Rotu.

"Don't be so rude, I'm sure she's just talking to the people on the other side of the two-way mirror." Wardi said, pointing at the large mirror opposite her.

Rotu got up and walked over to the mirror. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head from side to side, feeling with her senses for any minds behind the glass. "No, even with all this crap in the way, I'd be able to feel something behind here." Her hand swept broadly at the wall. "I think we're alone Wardi."

"Fine, be rude then. She fell in, and got sucked into the water recyclers. The next time you drink a glass of water, that little gold pin will be sitting the in the bottom of the glass." Wardi gave a little smirk.

"Exactly sis!" Rotu smiled impishly. "Which is why I'm going to go get something to drink from the vending machine we walked past on the way here. I don't want any gold getting caught in my teeth. I hope they have juice or something, I hate Tupari."

"Why didn't you just accept her offer earlier?"

"Why didn't you? I bet you want a juice or tea."

"... Tea. I don't know, I wasn't thirsty earlier. Boredom? It wouldn't be so bad if the browser was working."

Rotu got up to walk out the door, and turned back to her sister, "Tea. Gotcha. I still don't like her. Can't I be spiteful without you calling me on it?"

"No."

Both smiled as Rotu left for the hallway.

As coincidences go, having the younger sister leave just prior to the sweep team's arrival is not a particularly big one. It is compounded of course, by the fact that another unmarked black vehicle arrived on the roof parking deck at the same time. Additional coincidences would build, until the odds of this happening accidentally were so astronomically low as to be impossible.

Coincidence one: the vending machine closest to the interview room was rather mysteriously broken, sitting in the hallway with all of its buttons blinking, and the small text field displaying the price only in strange broken characters, which Rotu could not read, "RUNRUNRUNRUN".

Coincidence two: the next vending machine was on the balcony just outside the main stairs of the RIIS offices, coincidentally outdoors and with a clear line of sight to the edge of the roof parking deck. Rotu did not look up, but if she had she would have seen figures in black on the roof looking rather pointedly at her. Instead, the glare of the sun made her stare at the vending machine with her hand shading her eyes.

Coincidence three: when the sweep team was in place behind the two-way mirror in the interview room, Wardi noticed them when they began their broad-spectrum scan. When this happened, she looked up at the mirror where the penetrating buzzing sensation originated from. This prevented her from seeing the same broken characters that Rotu had seen on the vending machine being printed on the screen of her browser: "RUNRUNRUNRUN".

Coincidence four: when the sweep team registered a positive on their sweep of the browser tablet, it flickered briefly before lighting itself on fire and disgorging a plume of strange blue smoke.

Coincidence five: the blue smoke immediately triggered the building's fire alarms, triggering a mass evacuation of the RIIS offices down to the street-access level. During this confusion, both Wardi and Rotu managed to get shuffled off of the surveillance cameras around the building.

Conclusion: These were not coincidences.

Wardi had been taken by the sweep team during the confusion into a "clean room". She hadn't put up much resistance during the trip down the hallway, but she was wishing she had. It was humiliating to be stripped naked and scrubbed with nasty green and yellow caustics. They gave her a shot of something, as soon as she started to complain. Blacking out, she saw Archivist Berena recording her as she pathetically fought the encroaching darkness. Her tongue felt thick dry, "Ber... Berena. Where is Rotu? I... I don't see...". At that, she slipped and fell onto a floor grate, thinking to herself that it probably would have hurt if she weren't so numb.

On the other hand, Rotu found herself on a balcony with a vending machine and a number of people in black military uniforms who had seemingly appeared out of thin air. Salarians maybe? It was hard to tell with so much equipment hiding their shapes.

They were all armed, and pointing their rifles at her in a semicircle. All except one. This exception was holding a backpack sized box with a cable attaching it to a hand-held antenna. This antenna was being waved at her, while the box made a rather terrible whirring noise. Her senses could pick up the frantic electrical activity hidden inside the plastic of the box, even if she didn't knew what it did.

"Target Acquired! Neutralizing RF broadcast!" the one with the box shouted.

It gave her a sensation somewhere between queasy and itchy to have the antenna pointed at her. "What the Fuck!" she yelled loud enough that several of the soldiers tightened their grips on the guns. "I'm trying to help you people! Uhhgh... Turn off that thing! I'm gonna..." As if she had said the magic words, she fell to her hands and knees and heaved everything she had eaten that day back up onto the tiles of the balcony.

At the same time, she heard a metallic thunk noise. She couldn't be bothered to see what it was, but reflected in the wet vomit she saw some kind of strobe-effect with bright flashes of light. She could smell smoke. Everything exploded in a blur of motion for Rotu. Starting with her own startle reaction from the bang, she immediately backed into the vending machine while looking desperately at what horrible thing could have happened to her. Staring down at her chest, she found only lingering stains of vomit instead of the deep blue blood she was fearing.

Confused, but not shot, she noticed the buzzing from the antenna had stopped. Looking up, most of the soldiers were stamping around randomly, pawing at their eyes through rough black gloves. On the ground lay scraps of metal and plastic, and irregular scorch marks on the tile, parts of which were still molten. Smoke hung fresh and dense in the air, smelling cloyingly sweet, and sticking inexplicably to her throat.

Still unsteady from the antenna's effects, she braced herself on the vending machine and stood up. Walking as quickly as she dared, she wound her way through the apparently blinded soldiers. Ducking carefully around swinging rifles, and other dangerous projections, she found her way through the cloud of smoke.

Stepping past the edge of the cloud, she was confronted by two soldiers who evidently avoided whatever blinded the others. She saw the one level his barrel at her, and she coiled like a spring ready to jump anywhere besides where she stood. He stared at her through his visor, and she stared back, each trying to outguess the other.

They were so preoccupied with this, that neither noticed the other soldier was facing towards the sun, and firing his rifle repeatedly at a rapidly approaching vehicle. It was a red painted skycar delivery truck, with the side doors open and a pair of asari hanging out the side forming a barrier of swirling purple. Driving the skycar almost straight at the building, the soldier who was firing had to duck as it flew at roughly head-level over the balcony.

The other soldier was not as lucky, however. Being distracted as he was with trying to figure out which way Rotu would dodge, he failed to duck. The front fender met his helmet, and kept going. Though the helmet would stop a bullet, it would not prevent the torque of the motion from bending his neck quickly past the breaking point. Rotu heard the wet snap before she registered mentally what was happening. It was like seeing a rag-doll folded in half.

She was still staring with her mouth agape when she felt herself being lifted into the air. A purple envelope of biotic energy was pulling her upward toward the open side of the skycar. She glimpsed one of the asari hanging out the door, obviously focusing on maintaining the field. Rotu felt her fate being pulled away from her, and something inside her stood straight and steely. "No!" she screamed "Fuck you! I'm not going with anyone!" With that, she fought back against the pull with all of the meager biotic energy she could manage. She saw the purple envelope quaver and lose strength. Just enough that she grabbed onto the nearby railing, and held her ground.

Nearby, the soldiers' eyes had apparently cleared well enough to shoot again, and they fired on the skycar as fast as they could without overheating their rifles. From inside the now hovering skycar, she could just make out one of the asari shouting: "Damn it, we can't get her in like this without breaking her, and we can't get out and damn well talk with the commandos." The distinctive voice of a turian answered, "Use the fucking robot. MULE SIGHUP!"

Robots of any sort were unusual, but the robot Rotu saw scamper out of the skycar looked unlike any she had ever seen. When it landed on all four legs like some kind of wild animal, she saw that it had no head or neck, nor did it really seem to have a front or back. It had to be two meters long, with long spindly legs that looked like they were meant for running that brought its back up to about eye level. It walked jerkily between the soldiers and the skycar, and some unseen speaker began speaking at a volume loud enough to be heard through gunfire.

"MULE CAUGHT SIGNAL SIGHUP. SEARCH AND RESCUE MODE DISABLED. DESKTOP MODE ENABLED." it blared in a monotone. "Warning," it began, while two large guns swung out from its sides on articulated armatures and began firing wildly into the crowd of soldiers "please save your work and close all open programs." Bullets rang against its armor, several tearing massive holes into its flanks. Its own guns fired much faster, and tended to blow apart anyone whose shields went down into chunky salsa. If Rotu knew what she was looking at, she might have noticed that the MULE was not a particularly good shot, but more than made up the difference in volume and enthusiasm.

It's strange monologue continued. "The administrator has signaled that this server will be halting in 45 seconds. Save your work, and log out to avoid a loss of data." With half of the soldiers down, the remainder eagerly retreated to a more defensible position behind the doors leading into the building. Dragging one of their wounded behind them as they went, and the MULE followed them. It blared, "Warning, the administrator has signaled that this server will be halting in 30 seconds." It open fire with both guns on the wounded soldier. His shielding briefly flickered before being overloaded by the barrage of metal. Several rounds got through, and the soldier who had been pulling on his wounded ally found himself falling backwards and losing his balance. He still held the hands of the wounded soldier, but the entire upper torso had been cut clean from the rest of the body by the bullets. "Please save your work and log out to avoid a loss of data."

With the soldiers momentarily preoccupied, Rotu found herself unsure of which way to go. On the one hand, the balcony wasn't big enough to avoid either group, but she certainly wasn't a strong enough biotic to survive a jump of this height. The soldiers in black certainly weren't friendly, but she didn't want to go with people who had just tried to kidnap her. Her decision was made slightly clearer by the one asari who had tried to pull her biotically into the skycar, shouting to her over the gunfire.

"Rotu! Listen, I'm not here to hurt you or anything! But you need to get your ass in this truck right the fuck now! That robot isn't going to last forever." the asari shouted. "We're from the Transhuman Network; we just want to talk! Your family is in danger!"

While Rotu still didn't like them and their robot, the damn asari had done it. She had gotten Rotu's attention. Danger and spite could wait. She jumped on board the skycar. Once she was on board, the turian in the driver's seat called out, "MULE SIGCONT! Back to Dock!"

"MULE CAUGHT SIGNAL SIGCONT. SERVER SHUTDOWN INTERRUPTED. DESKTOP MODE DISABLED. SEARCH AND RESCUE MODE ENABLED. BACK TO DOCK. " At that, its guns withdrew into its sides with a snap. One of its legs was shot to the point of uselessness, so it hopped on the other three back into the skycar. All aboard, the skycar sped off with much gunfire from the balcony.

AUTHOR NOTE: Feedback welcome! To get better at writing fiction, I need to hear what people think about my work. Please either review it or message me via . Should I edit a chapter, I'll mark a revision note to clarify for whoever sees it.