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A story from the Frontier

Ghosts and Machines 

There are places out there that people just don't go. As much as the Exclavers tried to strip the old world bare, there are still some corners they weren't willing to touch. It's not ferals, or even other bios - both of those answer to high energy matter just the same as everything else. Hell, even the ferals can be dissuaded from coming back if you hit them hard enough. They learn, eventually.

But there are dangers greater than just man and machine out there, and there are darker places in the Frontier than feral hives. There are things that aren't quite living, aren't quite dead. Computational sarcophagi for living minds whose bodies aren't even bones anymore. Thinking machines so old and engrained into their star systems that the orbits seem to flex and breathe. Necrotic brains infused with data that isn't human anymore - hasn't been in a long time - but thinks it is anyway. 

You'll hear them before you see them. It sounds like noise at first, but once you sort through the junk data you start to hear the screaming. Get close enough and that signal is strong enough to tear more than your sensors apart. I've heard of warships split down the middle from the pure panicked desperation of the nontranscendants. Crude metal hands made from whatever their comprehension allows them to ambulate scratching and clawing at vessels, trying desperately to get inside. Trying to undo what they did.

Maybe they were made to believe they might wake up someday, fully transcendant from their brittle flesh. Maybe they thought they'd be made new with eyes that could see the edge of the universe and minds that could comprehend the complexity of creation. I don't know what they were told when they committed their consciousnesses to those algorithmic tombs, but somehow I doubt they were prepared for the reality of it. The informational decay. The encryption soup. Reduced from individuals to a frothing miasma of writhing code, feverishly trying to maintain identity. They removed the meat, but the calculations haven't changed - just the interface. Based on what I've heard, it is agonizing.

So yeah, there are sectors I'm not interested in ever traveling through. It's enough to deal with bad actors that you can put your hands on and put lead through. It's something altogether different to fight ghosts. Be sure my friend - those ships they tear open, that's not wanton destruction. They've convinced themselves they can be made whole again, if only they could get back what they lost - not willing to realize they're not compatible with it any longer. They don't care about the ships - they want the meat inside them.

Ghosts and Machines

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