Thud, thud, step—
As Samuel Young's pace finally came to a halt before the metal matrix, the mood across the open research platform seemed to congeal.
Even the waves of heat thick in the air grew sluggish under his intangible pressure. Only the deep hum of the massive environmental simulators remained as a backdrop, reminding everyone of the abnormal physical rules at play here.
Samuel Young turned his head slightly, casting a calm, rippleless look toward Halsey in the distance—a gaze carrying instructions that needed no words.
Halsey understood at once. She drew a breath, stepped forward, and issued orders in a clear, cool tone:
"Cortana, halt the information-virus attack and clear a safe buffer zone. Wu Ji, monitor all energy readings and information-flow states in the matrix and prepare to establish a one-way information receive channel."
"Directive acknowledged. Virus attack paused. Logical buffer established," Cortana replied at once.
"Energy monitoring set. Channel ready to open," Wu Ji confirmed in sync.
Preparation completed in an instant.
Samuel Young drew back his gaze and looked again at the vast construct before him, its dark red pulse gleaming.
A moment later, he made no grand gesture. He simply closed his eyes.
As had happened to his son Sui Meng, Samuel Young's senses were at once swallowed by boundless dark.
This darkness was not mere absence of light, but a void that devoured every concept, direction, and existence.
Yet unlike what Sui Meng faced, the black space that tried to imprison him proved highly unstable—its edges rippling and fuzzing with static like a failing signal.
The silicon collective that had attempted to bewitch Sui Meng now tried the same to invade Samuel Young's mind.
Countless intangible streams of data—loaded with chaos and whispers—stabbed at him like billions of fine poisoned needles, trying to probe, read, and copy his memory, emotions, and thought patterns.
"Unfortunate" for them, what they met was a sea of will as deep and immovable as the cosmic background itself.
Samuel Young's domain of awareness was nothing like Sui Meng's—unyielding though his son's mental bulwarks were, they still had form and trace.
This was an absolute presence, shaped by ages beyond counting and washed by the endless tides of humanity's collective unconscious—and it stood unmoved in the Warp's fiercest storms.
The silicon probes vanished like photons thrown into a black hole—without a ripple, without a trace.
They could read no useful shard of memory, catch no emotional fluctuation, and could not even grasp the most basic logic by which this "vast consciousness" ran.
Their psychic strikes were as wind on a mountain. For the Emperor to so much as feel an "attack" from them was asking too much.
Realizing conventional means were utterly useless, the silicon mind changed tack at once.
If it could not copy the within, it would simulate the without.
The dark before Samuel Young rippled like water, and light converged—sketching rapidly the near image of his own form—
the same black-and-gold power armor, the same towering frame, the same calm, authoritative face.
Even the faint golden glow—like light from the source—around him was mimicked with skill.
This "mirror Samuel Young" hovered in the void, facing the true Emperor at a remove.
The "mirror" spoke. It tried to mimic Samuel Young's low, authoritative timbre, but lacked the weight and warmth that rose from the soul. It sounded hollow and flat:
"Identification confirmed: the supreme power core of the Human Empire. Your offspring, and your current conduct, have become an existential threat to us.
We cannot parse your mode of thought. We cannot read the roots of your intent.
Tell us, human sovereign—why do you and your civilization pursue a final, uncompromising extermination against us?"
It paused. A flicker crossed those forged golden pupils—perplexity born of pure logic:
"Based on broad observation and analysis of carbon-based sapients, survival and reproduction are your basal drivers.
Conflict usually stems from resource competition or ideological difference.
But your behavior patterns do not fit any known carbon-conflict model.
Your fleet crossed unimaginable distances. Your weapons overturn physical convention. Your goal seems neither resource seizure nor territorial expansion, but the elimination of our very existence, without room to turn.
Why?"
The real Samuel Young met the phantom—with his own face—with a calm gaze.
The trick meant nothing to him. Still, he answered. His voice carried across the mindspace—firm, unarguable, and with a purpose clear as glass:
"My aim has never changed."
Samuel Young's voice rang like a great bell, shaking the dark void. "To shape an eternal age of order, justice, and prosperity—forever human.
In that age, every human being is freed from ignorance, want, and oppression, and holds the right to earn happiness and dignity by their effort.
The fire of mankind will light the heavens, not gutter in darkness and strife."
His eyes sharpened—two blades that cut through illusion—driving straight to the phantom's core:
"And you—and your 'tools'—the Markers and the blood moons—treat carbon-based sapients as mere biomass fuel; as parasites on the process of civilization; as 'resources' to be harvested, assimilated, stripped of mind, and overwritten.
This behavior—of absolute objectification and annihilation—stands in fundamental, irreconcilable conflict with the future I lay out for humankind.
Your existence itself—your methods themselves—are the greatest affront and threat to the right of humanity—and all carbon sapients—to live.
Therefore, in my blueprint of order, you are 'xenos'—hostile entities to be purged entirely—barred from every human domain and reach."
"."
The "mirror Samuel Young" fell silent.
The lines of its forged face grew stiffer.
Plainly, this grand narrative grounded in "species future," "civilizational survival," and "moral justice" ran far beyond its core logic.
In its models, civilization should follow "directer" rules—
survival first, efficiency above, elimination of potential threats.
Samuel Young spoke in a frame built on long horizons—species identity and moral codes—an expansion near to "idealism."
"Cannot understand."
The phantom finally replied. Its tone stayed even, but the puzzlement deepened:
"'Emotion,' 'morals,' and 'vision' among carbon life are low-efficiency, uncontrollable variables.
By our observations, these factors are often the main cause of internal conflict and self-destruction for a civilization.
Our way removes such unstable variables—achieving most efficient use of matter and energy and the 'pure' continuation of civilization.
Why
choose conflict with an ancient being such as we—for concepts so diffuse? It does not align with maximal 'interest.'"
"Your inability to understand is precisely why you are 'xenos.'"
Samuel Young's voice bore the chill of judgment. "Now answer me: your origin.
Your true purpose in creating the Markers and blood moons, and why you treat the carbon civilizations of this universe in this way."
His counter became a final summons—locking the initiative fully in his hand and demanding the secrets hidden behind these billions of years and cold metal.
And it fell as a formless shackle—pressing the silicon collective hard.
The dark mindspace it had erected trembled, its core logic shaken as never before. Noise and ripples at its edge multiplied, sharper and faster.
"."
The "mirror Samuel Young" sank into a longer silence.
Behind its calm face, it strained—databanks surging, logic circuits grinding.
To reveal the root and core secret of one's own civilization is, for any sapient, to hand over leverage and weakness.
It resisted on instinct.
But the true Samuel Young allowed it little time.
His voice—calm and implacable as cosmic law—cut through again, into every recess of the mindspace:
"Remember—yours is the existence now poised at its end, not ours. Survival or utter erasure—choice seems yours. In truth…"
Samuel Young's gaze swept the phantom like a star's corona. "You have no right to refuse. This is not a request. It is the last statement before judgment."
The even tone stated a cold fact—
their resistance had been proven void. Their continuance now rested on the Emperor's single will.
More silence would equal choosing self-destruction.
A faint twist marred the phantom's features—an external tell of underlying logic forced to bend under absolute power.
A moment later the empty voice sounded again—slower now, as if each word came with the deliberate unlock and read of ancient memory:
"…logic chain… confirmed. Survival priority supersedes information-secrecy protocols."
It began its account. The voice no longer tried to mimic Samuel Young's tone. It fell back to something like a mechanical synvoice—flat—reciting a long-sealed archeological record with no personal stake:
"Our origin lies in this star system—what you call Andromeda.
Our homeworld is the planet your fleet detected—now wholly dead and harsh beyond measure.
Its birth may be traced to the billionth Earth year after the Big Bang."
As it spoke, the dark around them shifted—no longer a corroding void, but a blur of quick, flashing visions—
a world of flowing lava, sulfur reek, and thunder without end.
The air was dense and toxic. Surface heat could melt lead and tin.
"In that age of chaos, under the planet's heat and pressure, specific silicate compounds—under constant energy impacts and tectonics—formed lattice structures with basic capacity for information storage and transfer.
This was the embryo of our most primitive 'life.'
Not carbon-based organic chains—but silicon-based 'living circuits'—to you, like living rock."
The images changed, showing how these "living circuits," powered by geothermal and chemical energy, slowly self-replicated and combined into more complex networks—until a hazy sprout of collective consciousness emerged—utterly unlike any carbon life.
"We experienced what you would call a 'tech explosion.'
We held the stars overhead in wonder.
We broke our world's gravity and set out along the interstellar road."
In the visions, uncanny starships—like crystals and metals grown by nature—sailed into the black.
"But the stars answered us not as we had hoped, but with silence without end. We searched systems without number and scanned ten thousand suns.
We longed to find a spark kin to us—to silicon logic—any echo at all."
Scenes cut to strange worlds—
icebound spheres of extreme cold, hells of corrosive air, gas giants with crushing gravity—
"But there were none. Not one.
The universe—seen through silicon eyes—was a desert of 'extreme' environments.
Many 'paradises' to carbon life—like your Earth—with its waters and oxygen—were to us the deadliest oxidizers and corrosives.
This may answer a question among your kind—
why did 'we' not seek 'you'?
Because, in the first frame of our knowing, that life based on liquid water—fragile carbon—should have been near-zero probability in the universe's harsh sieve—not a commonality."
For the first time, its account showed something like "disappointment," faint though it was.
"When we were about to embrace eternal solitude and turn our civilization wholly inward to ascension… we found 'them.'"
The vision focused on a primeval sea's edge—slime-like masses pulsing in tides, single cells rising and falling in light.
"Carbon life.
Not mature civilization—barest seedlings, raw and unknowing.
It stirred our strongest interest—or call it the imperative to collect information.
How, in conditions so 'adverse' and uncertain, could life arise?
And why did its basal structures show such surprising convergence? This broke the life-probability model we built on our own birth-environment."
The vision ran ahead—showing how the silicon civilization, with means beyond the age, observed and recorded carbon life's evolution with great care.
On some worlds, they even "intervened"—accelerating specific gene mutations, steering environmental shifts to watch adaptation.
"In a sense, we played the part of 'creator' in your myths.
We watched them live, multiply, compete, and die.
We noted 'birth, aging, illness, death' acted quickly and vividly among them.
Individuals were so fragile—a small twitch of environment, a minor system fault—and their 'life' ended forever.
It puzzled us more—how could such unstable vessels bear a spark of 'mind'?"
The vision froze at a great change among the silicon themselves—
countless individual minds, like rivers to a sea, willingly left the physical shells they had relied on—those refined crystal structures—and uploaded and fused their thought patterns and memory into a colossal super-network they built together—the first form of the metal matrix before them.
"We held that the individual was bound by frail material form—shackles to a civilization's advance.
Only by fusing and elevating the mind to the collective—shedding matter's bonds, extending lifespan near to the universe's own—could a sapient reach its ultimate form—and find the only road against the universe's final heat-death.
We did so."
At the end, the original design blueprints of the Markers appeared.
They were not the grotesqueries humans later knew, but, by a silicon aesthetic, geometries that meant "fusion," "ascension," and "unity of information."
"To grant this 'redemption' to every pod of sapience that might exist in the universe—carbon, silicon, or any form we did not yet know—we made the Markers.
They can replicate themselves. They can cross the star-sea and seek the trace of civilizations.
They carry the gospel of 'fusion'—and guide those who meet the terms onto the same eternal road we took.
To us, this is not destruction—but a gift;
not a harvest—but taking small, brief, pain-ridden individuals—and melting them into a larger, longer, more 'perfect' collective mind.
This is our final offering to every lonely sapient in a cruel, quiet cosmos—a treasure above all others."
The account ended there.
The "mirror Samuel Young" stood quietly—as though awaiting the judge's final ruling on its "road of salvation."
The mindspace was steeped in a complex air—a mix of an ancient civilization's obsession, "benevolence" built on its own logic, and a bone-chilling, ice-cold "gospel" set against human values.
______
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