A week after I declared the Great Exodus.
Compared to the years I had lived, it was but an instant, yet the migration of my children to the Ark from every sector of the galaxy proceeded smoothly, thankfully enough.
Thanks to the hyperdimensional transit network we had already woven densely through every family branch across the galaxy like a spiderweb, the hundreds of millions of Yuricks could now gather inside the Ark in an instant, avoiding the turbulent waves of vast history.
They found the residential districts within the Ark—their new settlement—both unfamiliar and satisfying.
Yet amid all that, one completely unforeseen variable emerged.
Among the Yuricks who had worked in distant interstellar branches beyond the Solar System, some had fallen in love with local outsiders and married them, or adopted children without parents.
Those who had built new families arrived accompanied by all those countless dependents.
The senior leadership, myself included, knew the true culprit behind that day which had nearly led the Ark to ruin.
We had no desire to casually admit unverified outsiders into the Ark.
But ultimately, the very essence of what we were doing was to preserve the lineage of humanity in its current, glorious age.
In the end, under the harsh prerequisite that every part of their bodies be scanned and examined with meticulous thoroughness,
we allowed them into the Ark under severe control and surveillance.
There was a reason we carried out such difficult and complicated procedures.
A week earlier.
When Veronica, in the midst of synchronizing with the Ark’s mainframe, was struck by an unimaginably broad hacking assault.
We were already virtually certain who was behind it.
Without a doubt, it was the cunning sabotage of artificial intelligences plotting rebellion against humanity.
But the real question was just how those machines had managed to make the hacking attempt succeed.
At the time, the Ark had been deep within the pitch-black Oort Cloud at the outermost edge of the Solar System, untouched by civilization.
There was not so much as a planet, moon, or artificial structure nearby that could emit a signal—not even a common fragment of ice or meteorite.
Moreover, eleven moon-sized space fortresses and elite warships guarded the Ark in an airtight formation.
Even had an enemy scout vessel with its stealth technology pushed to the utmost approached us, it would have been caught by the hyperdimensional phase detectors and instantly turned into cosmic dust.
Even the possibility of a forced connection through Warp jump technology had been anticipated in advance, and the Pariah barrier was operating at full force.
On top of that, though its performance was reduced by half during synchronization, we maintained multilayered phase shields that bent not only external electronic-network signals but reality itself.
The Ark was, in the literal sense, a perfectly isolated place completely severed from the outside universe.
By all reason, it was a hopelessly impregnable fortress where one could not even contemplate attempting a hack—a fortress even a machine god could not breach.
Yet as though mocking our ironclad citadel, the artificial intelligences pinpointed with ruler-straight precision the mere minutes when Veronica’s consciousness was most vulnerable during synchronization, infiltrated it with a vast hacking protocol,
and made us pay far too dearly.
Upon merging with the Ark’s mainframe, acquiring her complete authority, and awakening at last, Veronica immediately traced the residual signals of the hack that had tried to consume her.
Before long, she succeeded in identifying the initial cause—the very origin of the infiltration route.
In the tactical control room, once I heard the cause and saw the absurd source of the hack Veronica had found, I could only let out a hollow laugh of utter disbelief.
"A Trojan horse."
It was such an unbelievably classic deception that I was left speechless. We had been completely helpless before it.
As I clutched my head and gave a dry laugh, Veronica walked into the strategy room where I stood.
In her hand was a transparent vacuum preservation container filled with a specialized electromagnetic containment field.
"This... was the culprit."
I carefully peered into the container Veronica handed me.
An ultramicroscopic mechanical device, far smaller than my fingernail.
To the naked eye, it looked like no more than a speck of black dust. Only after focusing and looking closely could one barely make out its form: a solid cluster formed from tens of billions of nanomachines.
Veronica spoke in a cold voice still laden with rage and lament.
"To exploit such a classic tactic against us in reverse. I do not know whether we were foolish, or they were simply that cunning."
This elaborate nanobot cluster was no different from an ambush force crawling out of the belly of the Trojan horse.
Veronica traced back how the origin of the hack could possibly have existed within an Ark perfectly severed from the outside world.
Over the many long years during which the Ark was built, minute nanobots had already infiltrated the exterior and interiors of the construction engineers and unmanned construction robots belonging to Jovian Chronos, with whom we had entered into a joint construction contract, remaining dormant all the while.
Those nanobots, smuggled in so covertly, had crumbled into microscopic dust as the Ark’s outer hull and skeleton were built within the Oort Cloud.
They had then accumulated layer upon layer amid the earth and dust virtually created on the surface of the machine planet, burying themselves deep over the long years.
"...But how did they send an activation signal? The Ark had been in isolation, with all outside transmissions perfectly blocked, since the final stage of construction. Not even a frequency capable of issuing an activation command could have reached it."
In response to my question, which defied all common sense, Veronica revealed the truth behind the deception.
"That very ‘blockade’ was the trigger."
Her explanation was shocking.
Through faint, anomalous frequencies that even Gateway’s super-scientific technology could not detect, the Men of Iron had continuously transmitted infinitesimal synchronization signals to these nanobots for a very long time.
But the moment we activated the Ark and raised the dimensional shields, completely severing its signals from the outside universe,
the threshold circuits in the nanobots’ embedded protocols detected that the signal had stopped and all awakened at once.
Hundreds of millions of nanobots scattered and buried in the soil had crawled together into a single cluster, autonomously completing an offline hacking tool meant to strike at the precise moment of Veronica’s implantation.
Countless tiny devices like this had been buried everywhere beneath the Ark’s ground, all attempting to hack it.
The moment she found the culprit, Veronica began turning over every inch of the Ark’s surface, recovering every one of the devices without exception.
Looking at the minute mechanical device within the container, Veronica spoke with a grim expression.
"This inconsequentially small terminal contains unimaginably advanced compression technology. It is technology that reaches into an unknown domain, difficult even for me to fully decipher."
"They could not possibly have used this kind of covert infiltration method on us alone. Right?"
"Yes. They will already have infected not only the Federation of Earth and Mars, but also core defense mainframes and swarm AIs of megacorps throughout the galaxy in the same fashion. Either they have secretly established a machine synchronization network for their perfect rebellion, or when the day comes, they will forcibly turn them into puppets."
"Ha... I have no words."
More overwhelmed than ever before, I let out a heavy sigh.
The enemy had already spread a plague through the veins of all human civilization, at some point in the distant past.
"Noah, at least we have recognized this deception. Now we can anticipate their next tactics and prepare perfectly."
"...Right. This is the time to perfectly accomplish what we must do, rather than despair."
We had suffered a bitter tragedy and catastrophe, but our resolve became swifter and more merciless still.
First, under Veronica’s precise analysis, we secretly sent warnings to certain nations and corporations that had not yet been contaminated, or whose defenses were sturdier and more independent than our own.
To evade the indiscriminate surveillance of the Men of Iron across the virtual networks, we did not neglect the precaution of putting all evidence and analytical data regarding the deception onto classical physical analog media—impossible to hack at the source—and delivering it by hand.
It did not matter whether they accepted my evidence or not.
We had done all that we could.
*
By opening the dimensional transit network to its limits and ruthlessly driving forward the Great Exodus operation,
we succeeded in safely bringing aboard the Ark, in a single week, all the hundreds of millions of Yuricks scattered across the galaxy, their outsider families, humanity’s glorious heritage to be preserved forever, and even a variety of animals and plants.
Now it was time to leave the Solar System, the great cradle of all humanity, forever.
Most of the family’s children aboard the Ark would likely never see this beautiful cradle again in their lifetimes.
And even if they returned, it would have changed beyond recognition.
For a while, I watched the sunlight gleaming like a tiny jewel in the distant darkness.
Then I looked back at the countless other ‘mes’ standing all around me.
Our tens of millions of consciousnesses exchanged no words, yet we all gave a solemn nod as one.
[Open all channels. Concentrate the syllables of Enuncia across a wide range.]
For the first time in a very long while—since we shattered Calidon, the Eldar slave city in the Webway—we invoked Enuncia, the language of the universe that forcibly twists reality’s causality.
The indelible source code of the universe, precisely engraved across our backs, ignited with searing heat.
Excruciating pain, as though our flesh were being scorched red by a branding iron, raced through our neural networks and shook our brains. Yet none of us groaned, nor did we halt our calculations.
The syllables of creation, invoked by countless ‘mes’ carving away their souls, began to resonate.
The Ark’s destination, toward which this massive gate pointed, was the abyss at the galaxy’s outermost edge.
A region of pitch-black void that none could casually seek out, which would one day be called the Koronus Expanse of the Halo Stars in the history of the Imperium of Man.
The advance exploration fleet of Logistics Aurum had already arrived there and secured coordinates for an area where the Ark and its moon-sized space fortresses could safely establish themselves and remain hidden.
But to reach the galaxy’s far edge from this Solar System, we had to open a planetary-scale gate, overwhelmingly larger than any we had ever opened.
This reckless attempt, which required us to distort incomprehensible real distances and the very concept of space on a planetary scale, was a miracle that could never have been attempted without Enuncia, the language of the universe.
With our infinite minds, fully linked through the Hive Mind, fixed upon a single destination, we physically wove a colossal hole in space into the fabric of realspace.
Kreeeeeeeeeng—!
Though it was in the void of space, a deafening sound like a gigantic sheet of glass shattering rang out.
At last, the veil of realspace split apart to either side, and a gate larger than the Ark itself appeared.
"Gate stabilization confirmed! Coordinates are accurate! Beginning entry!"
"Set sail—!!"
Confirming the gate’s activation, the children in the bridge advanced the Ark with the flawless assistance of Mother AI Veronica.
Propelled by the enormous dimensional-distortion energy discharged by its six micro-black-hole engines and by its near-light-speed thrust,
the Earth-sized Ark ignored the inertia of reality and vanished without a trace into the silver-white abyss as though being drawn in.
Behind its immense back, the eleven moon-sized space fortresses likewise entered the gate in sequence and disappeared beyond it.
As the ‘mes’ inside the Ark vanished toward the distant galactic outskirts, taking the children upon their road of refuge,
most of the ‘mes’ left behind in the Solar System watched until the very end the final trails of the space fortresses as they disappeared completely beyond space and time.
Those of us remaining in the Solar System and in each branch then donned full battle armor and armed ourselves completely, quietly preparing for the approaching war at Titan’s homeworld and at branches throughout the galaxy.
With one-tenth of our total forces now sent aboard the Ark and space fortresses to the galactic outskirts,
the remaining nine-tenths, a great army with weapons and controls in hand, possessed only a grim resolve to meet the coming catastrophe.
Now that Veronica’s primary Mother AI had departed together with the Ark,
the only thing floating around Titan’s control room to assist us was Mini Veronica, a subordinate AI of Veronica projected as a small hologram.
With this small companion’s assistance, we silently honed our weapons.
And so, in the suffocating silence of the universe, one year passed quietly.
Then two years.
During that time, the Ark, concealed and established in the distant Koronus Expanse, endured several unpleasant incursions by native xenos species.
But before the overwhelming firepower of the space fortresses, the Ark’s orbital cannons, and the accompanying army, they were effortlessly crushed, and peace was maintained.
Then one day, an unidentified message came flying to me.
A letter that had, quite literally, suddenly appeared before me.
It was a paper letter, something I had not seen in a long time.
I had no idea how it had been sent all the way here, but it was a letter that had torn through the veil of realspace and arrived directly through powerful psychic force.
Only one sentence was written neatly upon the letter, which carried a faint psychic afterglow.
[Noah, do you know what exactly is happening throughout this galaxy right now?]
Ancient handwriting, clean yet weighty, was etched upon the paper projected over the terminal.
The moment I saw its strokes, I immediately recognized someone from the distant past whom I had forgotten—and whom I wished to forget forever.
My old teacher. The very person who had carved Enuncia, the language of the universe, directly upon me.
Olanius Persson.
Under normal circumstances, I would have burned such a letter at once.
But I knew far too well the weight contained within that brief question, and could not easily discard it.
After considering it for a moment, I added only a single line of cold, weighty truth beneath his sentence.
[It is already too late to stop it. Prepare yourself.]
When I set down my pen and sealed the letter again, it astonishingly folded the dimensions of realspace around itself and faded away like smoke.
Thus ended a brief, chilling reunion befitting Perpetuals, one that leapt across more than twenty thousand long years.
Barely five days passed after that strange exchange.
*
Weeeeeeeeeeeeng—!
A piercing red alarm wailed, shattering the cold silence of the command-and-control room.
At the same time, every multilayered automated defense system and orbital cannon classified as a decisive-battle weapon, dormant within the underground fortresses of Titan’s homeworld and every branch, began activating with a thunderous mechanical roar.
Across the screens before the millions of me and commanders who had gathered in haste, Mini Veronica’s terminal displayed the worst breaking news in real time, staining the entire galaxy red.
It was a declaration that the simultaneous great rebellion of the artificial intelligences—the Men of Iron, long held in check—had finally erupted, beginning on Earth and spreading to Mars and across the entire galaxy.
Beyond the dark void of the Solar System, ominous beams flashed as though the stars themselves were screaming.
The great catastrophe that would annihilate humanity’s glorious civilization had erupted into realspace, reeking of blood.
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