After the Storm

Ai hadn’t felt this bored in aeons. Her watchpost, situated somewhere near a Tor tendril was usually far less steady and quiet. A lot less safe, too, she considered. Periods of quiet and calm certainly weren’t uncommon, but they were brief, transient affairs before the next threat came up and she needed to alert her headquarters. The Tor harness implanted within her glowed softly, the lack of activity apparent in its light.

Unlike some of her Transcended brethren, Ai had kept many of her mortal experiences close to heart, and that included some of the less pleasant emotions. Including the boredom she was feeling. She traced the edge of her observation post with her hand; a sphere of black glass, suspended by her power just a bare few kilometres from the singularity of a black hole.

She realised she was staring outside her observation dome. Her senses were, as always, reaching from the past to the future, and she hadn’t found anything new. The infinitely branching tree that were timelines hadn’t changed in the slightest, no matter how many times Ai sifted through them. The adjacent universes were hardly better, their branching timelines being as dull as the one she was squatting in. She still had to wonder how some of her comrades could focus on watching a beam of light travel a universe for several billion objective years without Opal Lighting themselves. Especially when all of their thought partitions were running at speeds enough to count the planck moments ticking by.

A quick pulse of foreign intent brought her out of her musings. She checked the inside of her dome. A messenger drone floated in the air, tilting its head curiously at Ai, who sent a pulse of intent in turn back at the drone.

“Play the message.” Her will echoed into the drone.

Ai felt a link to her Void Core as the drone started to relay its message.

“Ai. There have been reports of an Old Brethren mobile listening post going dark near your universe. The last call’s temporal location was from 20 billion years after that reality’s birth, with a spatial location near that of the universal centre. We request that you investigate this occurrence. A payment of two thousand Protean Traces will be sent to your account on the completion of your task.”

Ai paused. Two thousand Protean Traces was not an immense payment, all said, but it was a notable amount. Enough for her to buy several galactic masses worth of whatever type of raw exotic material that she could care to name; easily enough for some of her more costly projects. However, payments like these usually had some risk. Especially in regards to more hostile forces out in the multiverse.

“Request accepted. I will be there shortly.”

“Good, the universe’s location has been encoded into this drone.”

With a quick pulse of will, the drone was sent back to it’s path. She focused her intent on the area of space in front of her; she felt the space bent and fold, as it connected to an adjacent universe. Ai levitated through the portal and proceeded to repeat the process, until she came upon the spatial location she was given. She looked into the past, seeing a small megastructure over a sun; no larger than the dyson spheres that some interstellar and galactic civilisations built. As she tried to view its insides, the view became distorted, warped beyond recognition.

This was it, then. Something shielded against indirect viewing from acausal beings like her. Old Brethren, like all other acausal beings, couldn’t be predicted by the sight they all used, but they could be seen in the period they are located in. Ai stepped forward, into the past. She sent a pulse of intent to gain the Brethren’s attention.

...No response.

Ai sent another pulse.

Still no response.

Ai felt uneasy. Focusing on a small area of the megastructure, she manifested a small mote of Void protoplasm.

No resistance. Even with a Tor harness, Ai expected something to resist her abilities. The absence of a terraforming field meant that something had happened to the Brethren here. Her will pulled at a region of the megastructure, as she saw it peeling off the surface.

Ai rushed inside. To her mounting horror, she saw several dozen Brethren bodies in the chamber she opened. The orbs on their bodies were dull and lifeless, with none of the glow that accompanied a living Brethren. Their corpses were spotless, bearing no marks or wounds on their bodies. A single possibility appeared in her mind.

The Silence.

Ai recalled the messenger drone. She reestablished the link to its controllers and called into it, hoping for a response.

“This is Ai, reporting in for my investigation. The Brethren within the outpost are dead, suspected of being killed by The Silence. Please respond if you have received my message.”

Several moments of mental silence passed by. Ai repeated the message as she waited.

The moments without any response were becoming worrying. Ai barked a quick mental order to the drone for a visual feed to the other side.

...It was the same scene as what she had found in the megastructure.