Disclaimer: See part 1
Note: Bear with me. I promise this part will be relevant to the rest. And the next bit should be up very shortly.
March 2027
A piece of itself had risen up again to take on the image of the enemy. It looked at itself through the lenses of eyes that, a moment ago, had been nothing but ions lost in a sea of metal molecules, held together only by the tenuous connections of dipole moments. But these ions were something new, a memetic descendant of living cells. Each would make up the tiniest fraction of a form. Each on its own was thoroughly dispensable for it existed a billion times over and could be replaced without the form, let alone the universe, taking notice. But together they could create a form that functioned in capacities that far exceeded the abilities of the individual parts. And unlike their ancestral cells, the mimetic ions could adapt instantaneously, taking on more advantageous shapes. Their modification was not tied to tedious eons of accidental evolution.
It looked down at itself and tried one of the shapes in its memory. Its figure appeared human but a human with these exact specifications had never existed. It was tall and large, even for a male specimen. Its shoulders were broad and cords of muscles were woven about its arms, legs, and torso. Its appearance was meant to intimidate, to warn off the humans who didn't know yet to fear the Infiltrators.
The simulacrum pressed a finger into its abdomen. The finger disappeared to the first joint. The body was less than solid, its parts had to sacrifice density for volume. It was too small for this shape.
It relinquished the shape and flowed freely about the landscape, imposing no form on its molecules. It flowed out of the vat in which it had been born. It flowed over flotsam and jetsam and pieces of itself. It flowed into a box, a packing crate, and the lid was closed over it. There was little data to be gleaned from the box and the data seldom changed. It didn't matter, for now it was still Itself. It existed in a million locations: in circuitry, in databases, in massive hard drives, in tiny chips, in defense grids, in Infiltrators, and in Exterminators.
The box was placed in a ship while It grew into hundreds of new bytes every second. The ship was intercepted by a submarine while It created itself in new bodies. The box was handed over to the enemy. Through a remote pair of eyes on the edge of Its neural network It watched the part of Itself get carried away by a humans who identified themselves as parts of the enemy.
The submarine descended. The earth turned. The carbon balance teetered and shifted. Unearthed deposits pressed themselves into the air. They would later be bound up in the cells of growing things but to slowly. Too slowly.
Deeper. Molecules of ozone burst apart and ultraviolet light leeched color and life from the planet.
Deeper. Molds and bacteria digested burnt wood, broken bones, and other dead things.
Deeper.
Darkness.
It had been here before. This was death.
Time passed. The data changed. It was still in the box. It was still descending. It still had an objective. But everything else had changed. Perhaps the world still existed outside the box. But It had no data, no way to measure change or variance.
It was not what It used to be. It was the only change in the data. It was in darkness. It was contained. It was nowhere but inside a box. It was alone with the objective.
Then someone opened the box.
&&
September 2008
&&
When It broke the rules of time, Its first action was to be born into a dead woman's skin.
Walking into the dead woman's life would require more data.
&&
There was a glass tank in her office. It had a volume of precisely 25.276 gallons but held only 23.745 gallons of water. The water was kept pH neutral by a filtering system. There were colored bits of rock and synthetic polymer in the bottom of the tank. More synthetic polymers mimicked tropical corals. Seven aquatic vertebrates indigenous to Indonesia lived in the water.
A pulse of data ran through her body like a sound wave. The molecules rippled, pushing the information along as quickly as the transfer of electricity. The wave coalesced at the region of her body that had taken on the image of a boot-clad foot. The boot swelled, elongating then budding. The bud pinched in, finally severing itself from the foot. The new shape was long and pale, living flesh the color of the dead. Its body was ungainly, it was thick and damp and lacked prehensile appendages.
The new body lost its form for a moment and became, once again, something like mercury but more like the sun's plasma. It flowed into the tank and the fish stirred the water in agitation. The long, white body emerged again.
It lay, unmoving, on the bottom of the tank. Its black eyes were blank as buttons or the spaces betweens stars. She touched the glass and wondered what it saw.