eugenesis-text

‘You mean the geode It has been fully assimilated. The Lifecode colours my thoughts now. It dances
between my synapses. I feel it like a heartbeat, a memory. Can you hear it resonate in my voice Can you
see it shine behind my eyes’
‘All I hear is a madman,’ said Magnus, ‘and all I see are symptoms of your madness. You steal our
planet from us, you pollute the Primal wellspring, and yet you speak…’ (he shook his head: he truly could
not believe this was happening) ‘…you speak as if we should be grateful’
‘Oh, you should be. We gave you so much and asked for so little in return. You wasted Cybertron
and you used the geode – perhaps the most precious object in the universe – to perpetuate your tit-for-tat,
schoolyard brawl, your small-minded galactic scuffle. Four million years… for god’s sake, you’d have
thought it was a trifle dull by now, wouldn’t you’ Xenon hovered a little higher and spread his tentacles
wide. ‘Perhaps I should enlighten you a little before I suck the life from your bodies.’
Galvatron put his hand on Ultra Magnus’s arm. ‘Hold your fire. I want to hear what he was to say.’
‘Contrary to popular belief, we were not forged inside one of Unicron’s intestinal tracts. We started
off as a quasi-organic race – now known as the Progenitors – with our own planet, Quintyxia. Like other
races, we evolved and developed and progressed over time. Unlike other races, we pushed our tech level
from two to 12 in a little under six million cycles. We started off drawing circles in the sand and, in the
time it takes most civilisations to invent the wheel, we mastered trans-warp technology. With a colonial
fervour we laid claim to a planet on the other side of the galaxy and christened it Quiniad. It was a halfbreed
world in a weak orbit, but we wanted to turn it into paradise. Don’t look so shocked! Our scientists
had tamed molecules and streamlined antimatter; we felt we could do anything.
‘We became classed as a B Grade race, two steps away from the Evopeak, the point at which
civilisations transcend the Base Dimensioned Universe and reach the Sentient Core, a plane of reality
populated by nth-beings such as the Fahl and the Vok.
‘We spent millions of years trying to take those last two steps, but we’d reached a technological
impasse. We made no further breakthroughs. Discoveries that would guarantee Ascension – anti-time, the
black gods, Chaos Point, remote memory and the like – were forever out of reach. Desperate to achieve
immortality, we looked elsewhere for inspiration. The only A Grade civilisation that had yet to reach their
Evopeak was a race known as the Masters, pseudo-corporeal beings in the White Sector. Our spies
discovered that they were developing AI technology so advanced it could breathe life into the lifeless. They
called it pre-conceptual reflexive inter-metaphysical unification software.’
Xenon waited for a reaction.
‘Do I have to spell it out for you The Masters called this software P.R.I.M.U.S.’
Magnus took a step back. ‘Oh my god.’
‘Quite,’ said Xenon. ‘The Masters tested their software on their most advanced computers: geodes
made from holistic crystal called “thought glass”. P.R.I.M.U.S. was encoded onto link-facets and split
edges, onto the molecular grain itself.
‘Suddenly self-aware, the geodes found they had three choices: go mad, commit suicide or wage war
on each other. The waging war option was always the most popular. Some geodes even developed a
messiah complex. We didn’t care; we wanted one. If we were to reach the Sentient Core, we had to steal a
geode programmed with sentient software and extrapolate the Lifecode – the purest expression of
P.R.I.M.U.S.
‘We recruited a large team of mercenaries – the Weavers – to raid the White Sector, being sure to
take all the necessary precautions: we rewrote their memories and pumped them full of emo-narcotics. We
even programmed a Pavlovian failsafe into their nervous systems so that interrogation would trigger suicide.
‘Our diplomats then set about engineering an intergalactic war. Believe me, it takes time. The
Weavers waited until entire galaxies were being wiped out and then, when the Masters’ attention was
diverted, sneaked in the back door – albeit a back door consisting of two hundred looped black holes and
quantum–sensitive reg-space.’
Galvatron turned to Ultra Magnus. ‘Did that make any sense to you Because to me it sounded like
typical Quintesson myth making. I’ve never even heard of the White Sector, let alone the Weavers.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ultra Magnus, shaking his head. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard Red Alert mention the
Fahl…’
‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not,’ said Xenon. ‘All you need to know is that the Weavers
returned with not one but two geodes, each encoded with P.R.I.M.U.S. We knew the Masters had noticed