index


Message-ID: <35856asstr$1017015003@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: mandil_k@hotmail.com (mandil)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Mar 2002 22:06:18 GMT
Subject: {ASSM} Masters of the Arches   chapter 13
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 19:10:03 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

.                           Masters of the Arches
                                 by Mandil



                                 Chapter 13







They entered into a small room which had another door facing them. But
this door was opened and they could see the immensity of the room
through the open door. The minute they walked into the small room, the
door slid  shut behind them.
There was nothing else to do now except  wall toward the opened door.
Vincent knew that they were somehow forced by an invisible hand to go
into one direction, and this did remind him of experiments he had seen
on television with mice or rats. But now they were the rats in the
maze of this underground compound.

They slowly passed through the opened door ahead of them and they
found themselves into an impossibly long room. Vincent couldn't even
distinctly see the end of it. Beside being exceedingly long; it was so
high that it was difficult to judge accurately its height. On each
side of them were machines of all shapes and some were even humming
with activity. He couldn't even begin to guess the purpose of all this
equipment and whether they were electronic devices of mechanical one.

They walked for a long time along the wide path between the machinery
until these were replaced by row upon row of tables with hardware of
all kind on them. There were gadgets with dials and some with screens,
while others had hundreds of hair thin wires sticking out of them.
Some of the equipment did remind him of research materials he had once
seen when he had visited such a facility in Boston.

Yes he could tell that this immense room had been used at one time to
make researches of some kind. As a matter of fact he could still see
the numerous chairs and stools near each tables. Everything seemed to
be ready and waiting for the arrival of the occupants of the place.
The floor was very clean and no dust could be detected anywhere, even
on the hundreds of tables everything seemed to me in order. It was as
though whoever was in charge of the place could not tolerate
untidiness or smeared glassware.

For the next ten minutes they walked straight ahead until they came to
the end of the room. They found another opened door leading to a
brightly lit hall. At the end of the hall was a circular room, in the
centre stood a four feet high table that reminded Vincent of an altar
rather than a table.

As soon as they arrived into the room, the light intensity diminished
and a strangely dressed woman appeared, standing on the altar-like
table. She was beautiful beyond description. Her hair was very black
and went down to her waist. While her complexion was olive in colour,
her face was sort of oval with wide green eyes having long eyelashes.
Never before had Vincent seen such a woman. The high cheekbones
combined with her thick moist-looking lips gave her a sensual look
that was hard to resist.

After looking at the trio for many seconds, she began to speak in a
clear and high-pitched tone that reminded Vincent of the voice of an
oriental woman.

<< My name is Brumelle. I have been waiting for a very long time for
someone to come here. You are the firsts to reach me in an extremely
long time. As you look at me, you are seeing a pictorial
representation of how I used to be when I was alive. >>

At this point Vincent realized that however real the woman looked, he
was looking at a sort of extremely realistic hologram. A hologram
infinitely more advance than anything he had ever seen or heard
before.

<< All the knowledge of my people and all the emotions I ever
experienced  with everything I used to like and love as well as that
which I hated and feared was placed in a computer program. The process
is more complicated than anything you could ever imagine. I will not
go into the details as to how it was done since it is not necessary
for you to be informed on that. All you have to know is that a machine
is now talking to you.

A machine that thinks loves and hates just as I used to do when I was
a living creature. I will now explain to you why I need your help and
if you choose to refuse to help me, no harm will come to you but you
will be transported to another world with no possibilities of
returning back.

On the other hand if you do decide to help me, you will encounter many
dangers but at the same time you will have a chance to save your world
and many other worlds including the one we are now on. Now do not
interrupt me and listen carefully while I tell my story. >>

At this point in time, the woman ceased talking and she looked at
them, each in turn as if she was trying to scrutinize theirs thoughts.
When her eyes came to rest on Vincent, he felt a spark of passion for
her and he realized that he could very easily fall in love with such a
woman. But as soon as she began to talk again, he was shoved back to
reality and he proceeded to pay close attention to what she had to
say.

<< A long time ago, my people used to live on a single planet. We were
born on that planet and we worked hard, experiencing pain and joy as
well as all the in-between emotions, and of course we also experienced
death on that planet. As time went on, we evolved in our way of
thinking and we also made tremendous advances in all branches of
science. Drugs were discovered and medical techniques were introduced
that made it possible for us to live longer and longer. The life
expectancy of the average population doubled in a very short time.

Then, there came a time when there was practically no more room for
the ever increasing population. Immense efforts were made in new
technologies and much research was done so as to find a mean to reach
our nearest planet in our own system.

Our solar system had nine planets, and beside the world we were living
on, there was the possibility of establishing colonies on two of the
others. Gradually those two planets were reached and colonized thus
reducing greatly the pressure of our ever-increasing population.

As time went on, many new discoveries were made so as to cure diseases
and the life expectancy of the population was increased even more.
Soon all three worlds became overpopulated and we were back with our
initial problem of overpopulation. All of our efforts were then
focused so as to find a way to reach our nearest stars, but progress
was exceedingly slow in that direction. Then in a stroke of luck, a
group of scientists discovered the secret of displacing material
objects through space by mean of intense gravity fields. It was the
discovery of the Simultravel technology.

This discovery was tremendously important for us, it was the greatest
thing that could have happened to us since it allowed us to travel
instantly to any of the three worlds in our solar system. Of course it
did not solve our problem of overpopulation but it did help a great
deal in solving our food shortage since the spaces that had been used
to build roads could now be used for cultivation since travel within
each planet could be done also with the Simultravel.

We had been working on means to build a faster than light star ships
for a very long time but with it we were never able to reach a speed
faster than ninety percent of the speed of light. After many
generations and much effort in that direction, it was then proven
without any doubt that it was an absolute impossibility for anything
to travel faster than light. It thus met that our problem of
overpopulation could not be solved by emigration to other solar
system.

The closest planetary system to our own was so far away that even at
ninety percent of the speed of light it would have taken two
generations to reach it.

We then decided to take the next best approach so as to solve this
problem. Many vessels were built and on each one of them we installed
a Simultravel device. Then each vessel was sent in a different
direction toward stars systems on which we were relatively certain
that they had planets. On the way to these yet unexplored stars, the
crew of each ship could be changed easily my mean of the Simultravel.
The technology of transportation over great distance is not affected
at all by either the distance or the fact that the Simultravel is
moving.

 You see, Simultravel will get you from one place to an other place
with no lost of time at all. It creates a reality field that is
outside of the dimension that we are now. When it is in
synchronization with a similar field elsewhere, - even it the distance
between the two fields is very great - everything enclosed within
these two fields becomes common and both places then become one. When
the field is shut down at the departing end, whatever is in the field
will appears at the other end. So all we had to do was to wait until a
ship reached a star system with an appropriate planets, then using the
Simultravel on that ship we could transport other Simultravel
equipments to that new world and therefore create a suitable
environment for the emigration of our overcrowded planet.

As soon as each vessel arrived at its destination, more people were
sent there and whenever there was one or more habitable planets on
this system, these worlds were colonized. More and more vessels were
then sent from this new stars system and the process was repeated over
and over again. A last we had a permanent solution for our
overpopulation problem.

The first vessel arrived at its destination when we were on the brink
of collapse. All of our resources were long gone and people were dying
by the millions for lack of food and also for lack of the minimum
necessities of life. As more and more vessels established foothold on
other worlds, the pressure on our planet - because of the
ever-increasing population - was greatly reduced and finally the
problem no longer existed.

This was the time of discoveries and exploration. It was the glorious
age of my race and for a long time we prospered. It was during this
period that the Rad virus was engineered in a laboratory. It is a
virus that can be introduced in the body either by injection or by
eating plants that were exposed to the virus. Once the virus is in
your system it will take care of you. It contains the prints of the
perfectly healthy human and it will work on your genes and order
repairs to your body whenever and wherever it is needed. Diseases were
thus completely eliminated and besides making the body perfectly
healthy, it also made it immortal. The only way to experience death
was by mean of an accident.

The Rad virus was released on every world that we had already
colonized and the population greatly increased. It did not worry us
since we had all the room we needed for expansion. Then things began
to deteriorate. Some of the worlds that were discovered were already
populated by intelligent life forms and some of these aliens even made
war on us. Of course they were easily beaten since they were all less
advanced than we were in technology. But it had been countless years
since my people had not wage wars and now the old spirit of war
mongering was rekindled once again.

Two completely opposed and divergent opinions developed as to what
should be done with these intelligent life forms that we encountered.
On one side were those that were in favour of the complete elimination
of all intelligent aliens while the other side demanded that we did
not touch these worlds where the aliens lived and just leave them
alone.

These discussions and debates went on for a few generations and
gradually our whole race became polarized on that matter. There were
those in favour of the destruction of all the aliens and then there
were those demanding that they be left in peace on their world.
Finally, when it became clear that the question would never be decided
with the mutual consent of both sides, those in favour of destroying
the aliens began to take matters into their own hand and they began to
destroy these different life forms.

The result was an all out war among my people. There were wars on all
of the planets of the star systems that had been colonized. These wars
went on for a very long time and the great majority of my race was
destroyed. The planet that you call Earth was among one of the worlds
that saw all its intelligent life form destroyed and so is the world
we are on now. That war is still going on at this moment on this
world, even if there is only one of the ancients left alive to keep it
going.

He is the last of the ancients left and he is engaged in destroying
all of the intelligent life forms he can find. He is not aware that
all those on our side are dead and that the only opposition he now has
is an artificial intelligence namely me. When I was alive, I knew very
well this last representative of my race; you see he was my brother
Valdo.

Valdo became a general in the group that favour elimination. Those of
us in my family that were not on his side, feared him greatly and to
escape from him we all went into hiding in a ship orbiting a
non-important planet. We were more than two hundred people on that
vessel as we watched planet after planet being depleted of life. He
would kill all life forms, intelligent or not.

All kind of weapons were used during this terrible war. Since diseases
could no longer destroy us, devices that created tremendous amount of
heat were used while on some planets an evil weapon was made use off,
it caused a reaction on the surface of the planet and it removed most
of the available oxygen from the atmosphere. While on other worlds,
they simply introduced diseases that killed some of the plants life
thus disrupting the food chain. In so doing it starved most of the
population; at least those that could not leave in time. With the
Simultravel it was always possible to save some of the population
before the ecosystem collapsed completely but in the end even that
didn't work since new planets suitable for life were not being
discovered fast enough.

Then things degenerated and before we knew it there were only few
dozens groups like us remaining; and this on both sides - that had
managed to escape. For a long time, the war ceased completely, we even
managed to introduce plants and animals life on most of the worlds
that had been sterilized. Some people even went to live on these
worlds, but these were too few in number and they soon lost contact
with the rest while the technology that they once knew was soon
completely forgotten after a few hundreds of your years. These people
became very close to nature and finally they even forgot about the
war. This is what happened to your planet  Earth.

At one time, all traces of life, whether it was plant or animal were
eliminated from your world and when we introduced it back, it was
mostly the same flora and fonda that had been on your original world.
You are the descendants of our people, and so are the people of this
world and many others.

Since your Earth has been completely sterilized during the war, the
Rad virus has also been destroyed there, but when people established
themselves there they were still protected by the Rad virus in their
body. But all the newborn were not protected. Two things prevented us
from introducing the Rad virus again there. First the ecosystem had
not evolved enough for the virus to take hold; second we no longer had
the facilities to mass produce the virus so that it could spread of
its own.

Finally, a few of the descendant on both sides became aware of the
existence of each other and war resumed once again. Instead of
destroying whole planets in the process, the war was concentrated on
the small groups of population that existed on them. When we realized
on our side that soon both groups would be completely obliterated, we
began the construction of a super artificial intelligence that I now
represent.

The technology-advanced population on both sides continued to decrease
until we were reduced to a few hundreds on each side. About that time
we made the recording that you are now looking at, we also placed
Simultravel in a few places on some worlds that began to show signs of
sustaining life. It was hoped that when a civilization does evolve on
these worlds they would continue the fight for us.

Valdo is now completely mad. Even though the Rad virus does keep
diseases away from the body it does not work on the intellect of a
person. My brother now lives only to win his war whatever the cost, he
will never stop until he is certain that everyone on our side has been
destroyed then he will set himself on the task of destroying all form
of life.

Since I am now talking to you it mean that there is no one left on our
side to oppose him, and everyone including myself has been destroyed.
Before you were permitted to enter the place where you are now, you
had to past a test, since you are now standing before me it mean that
you were successful in doing that. The test to enter here has been
chosen in such a way so as to prevent the entry of those that would be
of no help to us, had you fail in the test you would all have been
sent on a far away planet and no one would have ever seen you again.
Only someone with a technology advance background can help our cause.

Now if you have questions I will answer them and then you will be told
what is expected of you if you decide to help our cause. But on the
other hand if you choose not to get involve in this fight, no harm
will come to you but you will all be transported on another world. >>

Brumelle remained very still after the last words left her mouth but
Vincent could see her eyes resting on him still. Even now he still had
trouble accepting the fact that he was looking only at a hologram of
what she had probably looked like a long time ago. For one thing, she
was looking so real and she was so beautiful, but still the fact that
she could answer his questions did mean that she could interact with
the present. Then somehow she had to be alive.

Vincent's mind was still shaken by her story. He had trouble absorbing
all that she had told them, but the fact that he was here in this
world talking to a computer - because that is just what Brumelle was
even if he could see her - was proof enough that the rest of her story
probably had much truth in it.

During all this time, Verla and Nika had not said a word. Even it the
conversation had been in English, they both knew enough of the
language to understand what Brumelle had said even if the
technological part was too much for them. Both had an expression of
exaltation on their face as if they had been listening to the words of
a god.

At last Vincent was able to regain his composure enough and he finally
said.

"What will happen if no one stop Valdo, can he create more disorder
and destruction than he has already done?"

<< He now has access to no other world beside this one, but it is only
a question of time, - of which he has more than enough - until he
discoveres the Simultravel or the arch if you wish, that will permit
him to reach Earth or other worlds even. If he is not stopped he will
sooner or later discover these teleportation systems and then he will
proceed with his dark design of destroying all life where they will
take him. Since all of our Stars Vessels have been destroyed and also
most of the Simultravel leading to most worlds, it thus leave him only
with a possible access to only those worlds that he can reach from
this planet. >>

"Can he reach Earth yet?" 

<< No, but you already know that there does exist an arch on this
world that will permit him to reach Earth, you have already use it to
come on this world. I do know since that fact was recorded in my
information bank each time you did use the arch. This is why I know
you came from the planet Earth. >>

"If he is the only one remaining on his side, why is it so difficult
to destroy him?"

 <<Yes he is the only one remaining. Because of his sick mind, he got
rid of all those that did not think exactly like him, he is the only
one left. Since I am a machine, as such I have no mobility whatsoever,
therefore I can't run at his pursuit. On the other hand he has all
sort of machinery and weapons he can use. Only someone who can
understand how these weapons work has a chance to fight him. I have
tried hundreds of times to send native warriors against him, but they
were not a match against him. >>

"But why do you expect me to succeed?"
 
<< Your success is not assured. At best you have only a slim chance
against him, but it is the most that I can do, you are probably the
last chance that we will ever have to get rid of him. >>

 Never in all his life had Vincent been in a situation even close to
this. When he was in charge of his import-export company he never took
chances. When he bought 500 statues or 1000 radios, he was always
certain that he could sell twice that much. In that manner he was
guaranteed of a good price and he knew then that he wouldn't get stuck
with unsold items. It was not in his nature to take chances. Now he
was being asked to take the biggest gamble he could imagine, not only
was he placing his life as well as that of Nika and Verla at risk, but
also the existence of Earth itself was at stake.

"I can't. You have the wrong person, you should wait a little longer,
and someone much better suited for this job will show up, I am sure of
it."

<< No, I have been waiting for over six thousands of your earth years
and you are the first one that really has a chance. You see, we must
act soon because Valdo now know that I am on this planet, the only
thing that prevent him from blowing this mountain is because he does
not know where exactly I am. But recently he did come close to this
place and it is more than certain that he is going to discover me
soon. He has all kind of detectors to find me, and once he knows of my
approximate location it is only a question of time before he destroy
his only opposition. Once I am eliminated he will be free to proceed
with his plan. >>

"He would not be able to reach Earth if you explain to me how to blow
the arch to get there."

<< You do not understand. To destroy a Simultravel arch you need a
field capacitor than can collapse a field and there are none here. No
one will ever be able to construct one since to do so one must
understand how an arch function and how to built one. If you try to
destroy it you will only reveal its location and thus permit Valdo to
reach Earth earlier. >>

To each of Vincent objections, she was giving him a better reason for
him to accept her proposal. Even if he was to refuse now, he would
still be in danger since sooner or later Valdo would get to him
wherever he was, - after all he was a danger to Valdo also - then he
would still have to fight him and this without Brumelle's help.

He realized that there was no way out of it, either he accepted her
proposal now or he would wait the end on a strange world. How long
would he then have, he couldn't guess but one thing was sure, every
minute that he would live there he would always regret his coward ness
and the though that he could have done something to save his home
world would be an immense burden on his shoulders.

At last he had to agree to be her legs and eyes and to fight her mad
brother. Before informing her of his decision he said to Brumelle.

"If I agree, you must let my two companions here join me in my mission
to destroy Valdo."

<< It will be as you say. >>


                               ( end of chapter 13 )
                           <http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/mandil/www/>

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html>  Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Archive: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository |
|<http://www.asstr-mirror.org>, an entity supported entirely by donations.         |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+