Chapter six(M)

There are some machines within the conduits and hubs that continuously disappear and reappear. No-one knows why they do this, or indeed how this happens.

“Welcome to the Between. This is likely the only time you will ever get to see it, so you should make the most of it.” I spoke. The confusion on their faces was hilarious, sure, but I needed to introduce myself to them.

“Who, who are you?” The leader of the Spiril was the first to react. A fast one, she was.

“Who I am is not important, but you may know my former species as the Ancients.”

“Y-Y-You’re an Ancient?” The rest of the leaders were in disbelief, but the Spiril leader once again was sharper than the rest.

“Former?”

“Yes, former. I was forced to digitise my consciousness.”

“Hold up, let’s start from the beginning. You said we’re in the “Between”. What is that?”

“The Between is the space in between universes. It is a chaotic mix of primordial energies that constantly births new universes. If you came here unprotected your ships would be turned into pure energy in an instant, so I’m protecting you from it.”

“And who are you? Where are you?”

“I was an Ancient. Right now I am the planet beneath you.” Silence. Honestly, I was getting tired of these people just standing around shocked. Though, to be honest, I just exposed them to way too much crazy information.

“Y-Y-You’re a planet?!”

“Yes, I had to digitise my consciousness in response to an unforeseen complication.”

“What?”

I sighed. “Basically, I was a biological being before and then I turned myself into what you call an AI.”

“But that’s impossible! Fully sentient AI always becomes homicidal.” The leader of the Grent Empire butted in.

“Well, number one that’s false, number two I was biological before and number three I’m not killing you right now, am I.” More silence. Seriously though, what did these people do to their AIs to make them homicidal? Even ours only fought a few wars with us.

“Okay Mr Ancient, why did you bring us here and what is going to happen to us?” Hmm, seems the Spiril leader really is the smartest one here. Straight to the point.

“Well, I brought you here to have a chat, introduce myself, and hopefully make it so when I go back I won’t have to kill everyone. Sounds good?”

“Kill everyone?”

“Well, if anyone interferes with me or attacks me, I will defend myself. You are here to try and make sure I don’t need to do that. And yes, I have personally wiped out several star nations far more advanced than you.”

“No-one threatens the Grent Empire and gets away with it!”

These people might need a demonstration real quick. Hmm, let me pop back into real space in this dwarf galaxy real quick.

“See that? That’s a supermassive black hole.” I fire one of my comparatively weaker weapons at it. “Now, no more black hole!”

They looked extremely shell shocked when we returned to the Between. I think that may have been a bit too big of a demonstration. I don’t even think they have the power to destroy planets yet.

“D-D-Did you just blow up a black hole?”

“Y-Y-You have the power to threaten the Grent Empire.” The leader seemed a lot less arrogant. Seems like they were one of the “values strength above all else” races. They were always easy to deal with. Just one demonstration and they’ll never betray you unless someone stronger comes.