Ancestral: A Sci-fi short

Ancestral

 

The simulation ended with the bipedal creatures. It was the sixth time that Heid-Renn had watched it, with the same juvenile awe. Like every time prior, he had found yet more nuances.

He shook the immersion away, removed the head gear and stepped down from the simulation stage. His fancy ran wilder than the last time. He was restive. A moment was nearing.

“Scared?”  

He flinched. Turning, he saw the voice had come from around the corner of the passage. He knew its owner.

“The Gor-mith’s faithful spy”, he observed. “How long have you been standing there, Hy-Rowt?”

“It is not mine to keep an eye on you”, came the reply.

There was a pause. “I see,” he said coldly. “Good. Good on the Gor-mith.” The throaty chirp from his scale-plated throat had a sardonic ring. He entered his cabin on the side of the passage. She followed.

“You can see why I could be.”

The core reactor’s distant roar reverberated on the walls and passageways on these parts. It emanated persistently from deep within the Jot-grenig’s bowels, like an unfailing assurance. A marvel born of sheer intellect and limitless cooperative prowess, the Jot-grenig was ever awake, ever alert to preserve them from the dark, implacable void outside. To carry them forward with their race’s cause.

This time, of all the times that Heid-Renn had known, the Jot-grenig was not alone. A vanguard of smaller crafts escorted it along.  They would help it play a role that would flip eras—or so had the crew been taught. He detachedly stared at the dark green cabin wall.

Hy-Rowt crouched down beside him. The long, feathery bristles on her head moved in an asynchronous dance, tugged by involuntary muscles underneath her scalp’s bumpy integument.

“The Gor-mith knows what needs to be done, unlike you. Heid-Renn, know your place”, she said.

All knew the exact reason behind their existence. There was the rest of the Hanorin crew, carrying out orders. Then there was Heid-Renn, Hy-Rowt thought, the lone swimmer of the upstream.

“Jeopardising the expedition was not the best route to take for a Commander of the Jot-grenig. The next faintest suspicion of non-cooperation will have you sent back to Jot-zigor, for trial”, Hy-Rowt warned bluntly, and leant nearer. “Or for an in-ship liquidation.”

Still a resource worth threats. Heid-Renn could not bring himself to be afraid of them.

Even without looking at her, he sensed her unmoving gaze. She did not show any sign of impatience, not even a tiny bit, but he knew the task at her hand commanded urgency.

“We are common clones. Mere Hanorin. What is one worth?” He chirped in the common Jowhorgian tongue. “Juveniles take longer to hatch than the Gor-mith takes to synthesise replacements. Endlessly reproducible, expendable units exist at their disposal. The next Heid-Renn would be more efficient, more driven by instinct and more devoid of natural reasoning. A mere piece amidst the multitude in the Machinery.” An unexpressed struggle held him back from looking at her. “In time, it will play a part in bereaving another living world of its only chance”, he finished.

Hy-Rowt’s scarlet eyes tried to read his mind. The feathery bristles on his head had started to turn blue, hardly concealing his agitation. There was a tinge of cyan too. He sat still, ruminating.

“I used to know a different Hy-Rowt. She hoped to raise her own young, one day,” Heid-Renn said. “My cognition flared every moment with her. I had seen purpose beyond the Machinery, of which I had been an unremarkable part.”

Hy-Rowt touched the side of her skull. “Addressing Hanorin in Verification Sector. Conclude Trial Phase in post-present one galactic-time-unit.” She kept her eyes on him and moved her mouth. “Acknowledge.”

 “Emotions. Do you remember? Unwanted by-products of our genetic make?” Heid-Renn suddenly blurted. “You were there, when I became aware of them in me, for the first time. When the Onlookers lurked in nook or cranny, monitoring you, from under the all-black uniforms, I feared for you.”

That it was Hy-Rowt crouching down there was somehow unacceptable to him, and it showed in the way he avoided looking at her.

 “Let it go”, she tugged him back to the present. “Shed your doubts,” she said. “Your relief was temporary. It must end now. I am to give up the Commandership to you.” A section of the wall flickered, and lit up, producing a three-dimensional projection of a planet. It was not Jot-zigor.

He could very well have mistaken it for Jot-zigor, if not for the crisp blueness that enveloped it. To Heid-Renn, the sheer depth of the blue made the whole planet seem agitated, beneath the occasional wisps of white clouds. He was afraid he knew what it all meant.

 “That is the target-planet”, Hy-Rowt said. “The Bridge will be ready in a while. Are you ready?”

“Can you see how irreparably they have changed you?” He immediately retorted. There was a stranger tone in his chirps, which Hy-Rowt couldn’t place.

He found himself looking into the likeness of his friend and mentor, the best one of the few he knew, thinking what a shell she had become of her former self. Unnamed, unpleasant feelings sloshed about inside him. Emotions have never served a Jowhorg good. 

“That planet”, he gestured at the holographic display, chirping excitedly. “It is throbbing with sentient life, among a biodiversity of less advanced ones. I have looked into the data of the returned Scout Missions.” 

“Unlawfully”, Hy-Rowt said.

He ignored the remark. “I have found things that make this expedition go against traditions. Against norms of all past expeditions. They have only begun to explore their outer space. Relics of their visits, and rather recent ones at that, have been found on the planet’s airless satellite. To this day, their footprints remain, impressed on its fine, grey soil.”

Heid-Renn began to spill all that he knew. Sanguineness gripped him.

“Of the other planets in their system,” he continued, “some have received remotely guided artificial orbiters, even terrestrial readers. They bear resemblance in design and build material. Diverse pulses of electromagnetic waves keep emanating from their world. They communicate as a planetary civilisation, yes. They are only hatchlings in our comparison, a life-form starting on its journey towards achieving interplanetary travel, let alone galaxy-wide colonies. They deserve every chance.”

“Be the Commander as required of you. Before the little time we have ends.”

Heid-Renn paused, and made up his mind for another try. “Our race was once like them,” he pointed at the holographic planet, “helpless to the whims of a better equipped civilisation. But how would you know? You spawned the other day. And since been stuffed with incomplete truths, like the rest of us are—like I had been”, he trailed off. It was a mistake. From Hy-Rowt’s perspective, they would appear as unfounded claims. She only needed to remember.

“You showed me, Hy-Rowt. You showed me all the millennial archives, the evidences of ancient technology, still alive in the Machinery. How the fall of the First Race lasted for ages, how our ancestors gradually took over? The creators being left behind by the created as they edged closer and closer to their inevitable end?” Heid-Renn searched for the littlest semblance of assurance in Hy-Rowt’s feathers, and her eyes.

Giving up could not be considered till he knew how close he was.

“Jot-zigor’s present inhabitants,” he continued, “who so much resemble us—with the four limbs and the head and the torso—all descend from the artificial creations of the First Race. None but you had helped me see that, once.”

Her feathers stood still for a few moments. They retained the dead, grey colour. No emotion was given away. Outlining the plan might be the last nudge needed, Heid-Renn imagined.

“The primary storage of the destination coordinates lies in the Jot-grenig’s server-hall. All information to the Bridge-driver resides there. It has to be invalidated. The data must be overwritten and transmitted to all Listeners on our world and to all Swarmers with us, before the Bridge opens. We cannot let them be found again”, his eyes lingered on the planet’s image, “be that at the cost of a mere Hanorin. To revive the consciousness of a race that is superior in the soundness of its goals and treatment of sentience, Hy-Rowt would have championed this. This would be for—” 

“I see now”, Hy-Rowt muttered.

“...what Hy-Rowt means to me...” Heid-Renn abruptly paused. His crimson pupils seemed to momentarily brighten, a little luminescent. “You do?”

“I see why the Gor-mith must discard you”, Hy-Rowt squawked. Then, she quickly climbed to her feet. Heid-Renn fell silent, and fixated at her eyes, and she at his, each pair riveted on the other, unblinking. 

“The Jot-grenig’s Commandership is mine”, Heid-Renn said with a dominating screech, and stood up. “I must command you to—” She spun around, before Heid-Renn could have finished. As soon as that, she leapt away down the passage, sound of footfalls receding. 

He stared at the empty passageway for a few moments. The deep thrum of the reactor continued, indifferent. He knew betrayals only came from trusted individuals, so he had never been betrayed before.

He suddenly remembered the simulation. The uncanny forms of the target-world’s creatures. Their strange structural similarity to Jot-zigor’s inhabitants. He regretted not mentioning those to Hy-Rowt.

But he was the Commander, and he should have known better. His friend, mentor and guardian, the Hy-Rowt he admired, had stopped existing long ago.

The Commander raised each of his scaly, four-fingered hands on either side of his head, and spoke, “Addressing all Hanorin, Commander Heid-Renn speaks. Delay Bridge initialisation event to post-present twelve galactic-time-units. Stall rerouting of greniggan to Bridge-driver; remain alert for further commands. Acknowledge.”

Heid-Renn started to walk down the passageway, as tendrils of pale-blue greniggan periodically snaked across the dark green walls, illuminating them now and then. He waited for the acknowledgement, hands still raised to his head. He tried to sense what could be wrong.

“Addressing all Hanorin, Commander Heid-Renn speaks. I have resumed in the Commandership of this expedition. In Hy-Rowt’s stead, I command you to stall the rerout—”

Suddenly, his senses picked up a queerness. He slowed. He stopped and brought his hands down. The sound of the footsteps came from down the passageway before him. Swiftly, it overpowered the omnipresent background drone. He stood frozen, waiting for the tipping stimulus, suddenly wary of what could come.

From around the corner, the black outfits came into view.

Reflexes kicked in. Engineered instincts overrode logical thoughts. His eyes darted from side to side, looking for a potential equipment for defence, and his hand automatically went to his waist, and groped emptiness. He decided to turn around.

What are my plans without me? 

“Addressing all Hanorin, Commander Hy-Rowt speaks. Bridge-driver activation is scheduled in post-present one galactic-time-unit. Report to control hall. Acknowledge.” The announcement sounded in his auditory canal, through the device embedded in his head. 

When the cabin suddenly seemed too far away, he broke into a run, with no mind to stop.

Among other things his body was meticulously synthesised for, sustained stamina came with nimbleness. But, for some reason he could not think of, he felt himself slowing down. As if time itself sat playing an untimely jape. He couldn’t tell if his pursuers were accelerating really. He had never had Onlookers at his heels before.

The synchronised footsteps were close by, behind him, gaining up.

Swiftly, they did. And before he could turn to put up any amount of resistance, he felt his legs buckle under him.

The walls tumbled away at odd angles. Pale blue flashes of greniggan blurred before his eyes as he tipped over and fell towards the floor. There was a commotion over him, of chirps and squawks and clicks in the common Jowhorgian tongue. As he collapsed, the sounds muffled and faded away, and everything turned blacker than Onlookers’ outfits.

#

Echoes of a distant past rang in his senses. Snapshots from it flitted by before his mind’s eye.

The animate are no different from the inanimate. A memory appeared from the time of his training days. Except the sentient ones. He would ask how one could tell a sentient being from insentient ones. The answers had hardly quenched his curiosity, but he could not overlook the common theme they carried.

The Gor-mith had the last word. If it is incapable of civilisation.

Jot-zigor was an active industry of clone synthesis. They were named Hanorin, and taught about intricacies of how existence can be bent to their needs. The laws of Change. They were taught the obscure history of their rise to planet-wide dominance, of the time before Jowhorgs, their race, had come thus far. What came last was their Grand Effort, of sowing their seeds across the galaxy, upon world after world. 

“Coexistence is a utopia for the short-lived”, the Hanorin were told. If a planet’s worth of life was deemed insentient, it was to be cleansed, and their world was forfeit to the ambitious, expansive Jowhorgian colony—so the Hanorin were told.

Heid-Renn doubted if his unit was ever trained past the requirements of a colonial expedition. The ancient archives were out of his reach, locked away from the mundane routine of the Hanorin. Uncontainable curiosity would make him seek after ways to look beyond the common curriculum.

One time, he got caught trying to go past the checks into the central library. He had been brought before an elderly Original Born. Hy-Rowt, she was called. Just another educator at his unit.   

Before a Gor could sentence him, Heid-Renn’s unusual eagerness had caught her interest, by a little surprise. In the backdrop of a homogeneous society that was engineered to spurn curiosity, the shine of his tenacity had bedazzled her eyes.

To Heid-Renn, she had stood out, as much from the Hanorin as from the Original Born educators at the training complex. She was very much born from an egg, laid by a Jowhorgian mother. She was influential in the world-seeking research of the Grand Jowhorgian Effort.

“Life struggles every moment, against natural forces that drive particles towards the desolation of equilibrium”, she would say. “That is chaos coexisting with order, that is us, the race of Jowhorgs, the Prevailing Race, and every being you see upon this world. We, too, were vulnerable once, to the fancies of a dominant species, of natural agents against which we had no defence. We do now. We can now fathom the ages of evolution it takes for life to become self-aware in effect, to become the vessels through which Existence knows itself.”

They had bonded over the unspoken histories of their species. He had soon begun to learn of the Jowhorgs’ far past.

 “The Gor-mith meant to rescue the race,” she had taught him. “They swallowed every opposing ideology among a people with an uncertain future. When the race worked together, they brought the promise of a greater measure of culture and progress, to spread our age-old consciousness to the far ends of the galaxy, unbound to Jot-zigor’s fate. As it changed, the Gor-mith changed. In the end, a regime remains, fuelled by instincts, having shunned all evidences that could make them wiser.”

 Their meetings were clandestine. The old, long preserved simulations that she would show him from the central library had since remained seared into his memory. At one point, Heid-Renn had come to learn about the First Race.

“This was a conflict that lasted through ages”, she had explained. “It predates the rise of our race by several million revolutions. Vyhorgs, the First Race, were fundamentally different from our ancestors, as were they from all other beings found preserved on Jot-zigor today. So different in build and abilities, philosophies and purpose, that they have not stopped seeming foreign to the history of Jot-zigor’s native biosphere.”

Her teachings were heavy with the weight of evidences that had trickled down the millennia and gathered before him. He could only be awed.

The Gor-mith had programmed Onlookers to enforce their will at the cloning complex. To sieve the rogues. Heid-Renn could sense their presence at every unexpected place, hidden behind black outfits, silent and uncomplaining, fool-proof and relentless. They had started to appear more frequently around Hy-Rowt. The smell of defiance was strong around her, perhaps. This was when Heid-Renn had begun to notice the changes. 

“You are not supposed to have emotions. Since when?” Hy-Rowt had sounded surprised.

“What are emotions?” he had asked.

“Erroneous by-products of your genetic make. They can suppress your ability to make rational decisions. The Gor-mith detests it in Hanorin. It makes them act on their own interest.” She had paused, thoughtful. “We all thought the present procedure for synthesis had solved it.”

Heid-Renn had never told her about the unpleasant kind that he had been having. It was whenever he would sense the Onlookers. Later, he would realise, he had grown attached to her. He was worrying for her.

All Hy-Rowt tried was to teach him the way to release his potential—as a free-thinking, rational Jowhorg—as she would say. “You have been created for more things than they had intended. Put yourself to use, Heid-Renn”, she would tell him.

“I hoped, for a day when I would be able to rear my own offspring”, she had revealed to him the last time they had talked. “Only if I could produce my own eggs, and the ability not been taken from me. Like numerous others it is taken from now and then, since ages. I would have raised an epitome for the race”, and she had paused, observing him with a forlorn fondness, the feathers a mix of green and cyan on her head.

Heid-Renn had never felt so upset before.

“At the behest of the Gor-mith, Jowhorgs have spread and colonised worlds”, she had said. “But they remain dismissive of qualities that have brought us so far.”

Heid-Renn had tried to warn her about the Onlookers, but emotions were in control. Or perhaps, she knew already.

At one point, Hy-Rowt had unexpectedly disappeared. Not a word of an impending transfer, it was as sudden as he remembered. He had searched everywhere in their training complex, waited for days. His worry had only grown for her. Oddly, Onlookers had grown fewer around him then. 

And then, before he could find her, he was sent on his first expedition.

As the apprentice, Heid-Renn was to learn the ways of the elders. He had picked up the tricks of braving unpredictable terrains on an unvisited target-world, while helping collect data on its surface conditions to make it ready. It would help the later-to-come initial colonies adapt to the new habitat. 

“Imagine, there was a time, so long ago, when Hanorin did not exist”, the Commander had mused. “Machines would fall short in the place of live Jowhorgian subjects. The most promising of clones are sent on Scout Missions. One day, one of you might have the Jot-grenig’s Commandership.”

Heid-Renn had held a little container with a grainy, grey fluid in his grip. “Is this what helps quicken the adaptability of new settlers?” he had asked.

“The Kaigid substance, yes. Or, the Evolution Catalyst”, the Commander had answered. “Before this existed, terraforming a target-planet would be the only alternative. That consumes more time and resources by far.”

“How is the required energy supplied? Or matter, even? The target-planet’s surface conditions wouldn’t change the extent to which the process is energy-intensive. Is more Kaigid used in practice? Is matter and energy drawn from the Shrunken Dimension? Or is—”

“It quickens metabolism beyond extremes. The settlers need to ingest far greater amounts of sustenance. Reducing the amount would mean a promising, new advancement.”

Heid-Renn had thought for a while. Long after the conversation had died, he had returned, approaching him anew.

“Evolution alters species. If the race needs to survive as different species on colonised worlds, what will remain of original Jowhorgs? What will be achieved?”

The Commander had forgotten to respond for two moments.

“You are very curious. I recognise that. Too curious for some. Be advised.” He made sure Heid-Renn had understood. “The race is an abstract concept”, he said. “Evolution is ineluctable destiny. It is the only constant.”

The Commander’s words had made him feel good. On the other hand, he would miss the other individual that he trusted the most. A while had passed in this. Eventually, the expedition returned to Jot-zigor.

Once back, he had found her. But the stark contrast from before he left had struck him harshly.

She was no more an educator. Her orange eyes had turned a darker shade, of red. Strangely, most of her memories were lost, and her demeanour had changed. The Onlookers at the training complex had suddenly begun to seem uninterested in her whereabouts. 

He had realised, Hy-Rowt was gone. The scarlet in her eyes had given it away, a noticeable contrast from Original Born eyes. There was a clone now. After a while, he had found, the Commander from his first Scout Mission had been removed as well. Erased and replaced. What remained were the mission critical abilities of his former self, an instance of the vast Hanorin population.

It was the time when Heid-Renn had first felt guilt, and the feeling of cyan. He had started faulting himself for the fate of the only individuals that had ever shown him warmth.

“Emotions have never served a Jowhorg good”, the Hanorin used to chant, mouthing what they were programmed to say.

Heid-Renn would find himself longing for companionship. The sea of clones around him would only be lacking. On the other hand, no call came upon him for a new expedition. Educators avoided interaction with him. Over time, he grew less convinced of the Gor-mith’s mindless need to wipe out biospheres on other planets.

At one point, he had begun to research the Kaigid substance. The new instructor at the complex had noticed him for it. Extra ingestion was nearly absent in the solutions he proposed. A way forward.

He knew the trainers would notice him for his aptitude. He had won the Gor-mith’s trust, again. Calls for new expeditions would came his way.

The memory of the last one was raw in his mind. The Bridge had led them to a view of a spectacular world. Yet, for all the beauty that the universe had endowed upon the planet—he had wondered while watching it calmly turn in the vacuous void—there had never been a mote of consciousness to celebrate it, to cherish it or to defend it.

The star system was a nascent one. The planet was a hatchling, warm and full of the liquid of life, and no one to assimilate it, to put it to use and to grow in complexity and number over eons.

This was all that the Gor-mith’s information was comprised by.

The expedition had descended upon that world—all the sixteen Scouts that had been sent with and inside the lone Jot-grenig. To his surprise, the planet was not as dead as it had seemed, he saw, once they had landed.

Variously sized, little, red, pulsating blobs dotted the landscape for as far as he could see. Animate specks hovered in the cloudless, ochre sky, and in the air around them. Hy-Rowt's clone had been there then. A Scout had announced, “Another home for Jowhorgs”, before swatting a floating creature that had got too close to her, splattering it upon the wet, rocky ground.

The Commander had told them to open some of the many pod-shaped containers brought along. Heid-Renn had had little knowledge of what they contained, until he had done his part.

Once the pods were opened, little creatures were freed upon the terrain. It had never been a final colonisation expedition, or a Scout Mission like the ones he had been on. It was too early for him to realise that they had been sent for something else.

As soon as that, the pod-creatures had dispersed. Some floated off into the air and some scurried away across the land, driven by unnaturally precise instincts. Heid-Renn witnessed them slaughter the native creatures in droves.

The terrestrial pod-creatures attacked the red blobs, which burst open with sickening shrieks of distress, spewing jets of white mist. Above them, the floating creatures were intercepted, dismembered and consumed mid-air.

“What is happening?” he had asked. The Scouts had remained silent in their work, as they had released more and more pod-creatures they had brought along on the Jot-grenig.

“Do your bit, Heid-Renn”, the Commander had commanded. And done his bit he had, as Hy-Rowt had eyed him. Yet more pods were opened. More killers were unleashed upon the living world, a civilisation that would never be.

#

The once Commander blinked the dark veil away, and opened his eyes to the bright control-hall.

Heavily disoriented, he tried to make sense of his surroundings, as he turned his head around to take in the view. One by one he registered the objects. Onlookers stood by. He was restrained, the dull black metal of prisoners’ cuffs glowing pink from the force fields holding them together.

Across from him, he noticed, to his bewilderment, the outstretched body of a strange creature. 

It was held in place by a framework for experiments. The raggedly rent midsection, and the limply open oral cavity told him, it was dead. No, killed. He couldn’t help being disturbed by its form.

Dark brown, smooth skinned with sparse growths of black hair, a pair of limbs on each end, a head capped by a hairy mass, a torso from which all that sprouted, and a face with what seemed like eyes, a raised nasal structure and…

He knew it didn’t belong to Jot-zigor’s biosphere. But its uncanny shape strangely indicated otherwise. And suddenly he remembered a simulation.

"Emotions have never served a Jowhorg good, Hanorin.” He hadn’t noticed the hologram take shape before him until it had voiced those words. 

“Gor Zrassen-Hano”, Heid-Renn mouthed. The Gor lord of the Hanorin had always influenced his fate in some way, but he had failed to seal it the last time he had the chance.

Zrassen-Hano's orange pupils pulsated rapidly. Each cycle had a pair of pulses—a subtle one, a less subtle one, a pause, and it all cycled back. His apathetic countenance gazed back at him frigidly.

 “Yes. You know me. Now”, he said. “Observe that creature. It is an instance of the dominant species on Veit-zigon", he spoke, gesturing at the floating hologram of the target-planet beside him. “It was captured in the last Scout Mission. Great lengths of time have been spent on study—”

“Gor Zrassen-Hano, it happens to be from a planetary civilisation.” Heid-Renn cut in. He could spare no time. “Strong, coordinated resistance could be awaiting us. This type of a world is unprecedented. You are pushing the Hanorin for deleterious failure.”

“The next time you interrupt will also be the last time you will have expressed your thoughts. It will come sooner, is what I mean. This fleet is the most advanced among all expeditions in the Effort’s history, or did you forget that?” The Gor paused.

“Theirs is a disunited species that still communicates with electromagnetic waves None but a pebble lies on our path”, he went on. “What is it that tells me you have different concerns from the expedition’s success, behind your wretched schemes against the Grand Jowhorgian Effort? Do you still long to be an Original Born? Or have you grown empathetic, common clone?”

 In a fit of blind rage, from a spark he had never felt inside him, he tried to break loose from the bonds. The Onlookers edged closer in. “Our ancestors did not struggle against the Vyhorgs for this—for their descendants to become unthinking killers!” His chirps became screeches.

“The dead Hy-Rowt taught you that, no?” the Gor jeered, and watched his feathers turn starker pink. “What else did she tell you about the motives of the Effort? Did she also tell you that our ancestors had been engineered? From scratch? Ranted like a delusional, complacent preacher?”

Zrassen-Hano twisted the disc attached to the side of his skull. He kept his eyes fixated on the prisoner. “Crew of the Jot-grenig, Hanorin of the Effort, your Gor speaks. Before me stands Heid-Renn, the once Commander, fallen out of the precious Jowhorgian cooperation. Not even the most useful can be excused on grounds of the Effort’s sabotage. Take heed and acknowledge.” It was to largely influence the defective pieces. They needed to make mistakes, to be identified for replacement. Zrassen-Hano knew that it was the work of passive threats.

“Is ego all you have ever nursed?” Heid-Renn screeched.

Zrassen-Hano turned the disc back, and let the gravity settle. There was a long pause before he spoke. There was a dark pink on his feathers—Heid-Renn knew the colour of a brewing, indignant outburst.

“Heid-Renn. You have served the Machinery well. That your fate is imminent, I will satiate your misguided, unrestrained curiosity with a bellyful of the truth. Although Jowhorgs had never naturally originated on Jot-zigor, we were never results of Vyhorgian technology.” Even from beyond the projection, Zrassen-Hano’s eyes bored into his. “Ever”, he hissed.

“It was millennia ago when Vyhorgs had achieved interstellar travel”, he spoke slowly, mocking Heid-Renn’s intelligence. “The same race that you have falsely known to have borne us from their raw wits.  They had set out to find and bring lifeforms back from elsewhere. It was a way to populate their new colony, the world that you have come to grow on, Jot-zigor. You see, they had strange philosophies, to rear alien life as pets and successors and what-not.

“Colonisers as they were, no, no Vyhorgian ruin has been found on another world. Yet”, Gor Zrassen-Hano picked up. “All the rest of their interplanetary civilisation seems to have worn itself down to oblivion. They were never meant to last, were they? But you would never know.

“Once, they had come upon Veit-zigon. They had found it infested with life”, the Gor paused again, quickly eyeing the hologram of the target-world. Heid-Renn stood paralysed, processing the cascade of new information.

“On the other hand, the Effort searched for the ancestral throne for ages. The most ancient archives have at last been recovered, and decrypted. They point towards the same coordinates.” He stopped to study the prisoner’s reaction.

Heid-Renn's sheer, confused disbelief was not enjoyed by the Gor. “What ancestral throne?” he cheeped.

“It’s their world now!” Zrassen-Hano squawked viciously, pointing at the dead creature. “You have seen simulated Vyhorgs in the restricted archives. Would you say we are built in their image? And here, look at that weakling. Do you not see the resemblance? Some unfair, cosmic onslaught drove our ancestors extinct—to make way for these soft-skinned, primitive bipeds.”

The Onlookers were readying themselves, as if from some unheard command.

“Our ancestors reigned on that world once. There are far older histories than ever imagined by your dead acquaintance, the one that we drove the worthless rebel out of. The children of Veit-zigon ended up pulling through here, on Jot-zigor, evolving past and surviving the Vyhorgs. Over millions of revolutions, they strode past jarring odds on this far-away corner of the void—for it all to culminate in this—our retaking of Veit-zigon, the Ancestral Nest.”

Heid-Renn stood placidly, trying to find meaning in his purpose, once again, after a long time.

“What am I to make of this?” He cheeped, trying to make it all make sense even as he spoke. “Does it all amount to a second chance? A rare opportunity granted by the universe? Natural—”

“And what all this makes you, clone, is a defective piece in the elaborate Machinery”, Gor Zrassen-Hano interrupted. There was even less regard for him in his voice now.

“It was yours to obey. Not to doubt, to feel or to look at things you are forbidden from. You will fade away knowing how flawed you were. Veit-zigon is out there, at long last. The Grand Jowhorgian Effort is at its climax. And you, common clone, were out to prevent it!”

The next moment to the one he finished, the hologram rippled and disappeared. The Onlookers were quick after that.

Heid-Renn could only try fighting them when they moved in, already helpless in the cuffs. It did not matter if he believed the Gor. It would change nothing. The blackness was upon him.

Past him, two other Onlookers led a crew member, a Hanorin, into and out of the control-hall. He caught a glimpse of the individual’s features long enough to lose any dreg of will.

All facets of reality dawned on him one after the other. The Gor-mith owed him nothing. It was because his memories were being processed that he was reliving them.

They were waiting till a new Heid-Renn was ready. They were only making sure.

As he started to go limp, he missed his clone turning towards him to steal a glance, before disappearing into a portal.

The last thing he heard before everything faded to dark, was through the equipment in his skull.

“Addressing all Hanorin, Commander Hy-Rowt speaks. The Jot-grenig enters the Bridge.”

#

When Hy-Rowt turned, she found herself facing Heid-Renn’s form. His feathers were a solid grey as he gazed at her, motionlessly.

“Acknowledge”, she said, into the skull-device.

She heard the pings, as acknowledgements from all sectors rang in her head, one by one. As she beheld the new arrival, she was unaware why she was being stared at so strangely. So coldly.

He was only observing her feathers. Miniscule specks of cyan had bloomed on them.

A not-as-good version of this story won me the first prize at a science fiction story writing contest called Spin-a-Tale, organised by SEDS REC.