One thousand five hundred and forty-two years ago - Deep Space

  Varesh-Til stood in the sterile glow of the control chamber, her eight elongated fingers dancing over the interface as she finalized the deployment sequence, the light below casting a glow that illuminated the webbing between each finger. Her violet eyes were large and reflective, and they darted back and forth as she processed the data on the holo-display before her.

  Her eyes were remnants from a world she would never see again, adapted to filter the hazy oranges and yellows of her home planet. Now, they gleamed with an eerie luminescence, catching the cold, artificial light of the ship’s interior.

  Her skin, a deep, slate blue, was traced with bioluminescent veins that pulsed in rhythmic patterns, a visual language of thought and calculation among her kind. Once, those markings had blended into the dense, fungal canopies of her homeworld, Seraxiis. It was an evolutionary gift to creatures who hunted in twilight. Now, they marked her as the scientist who had sealed her species’ fate, the architect of their exodus.

  A pair of vestigial gill slits remained on either side of her slender neck, a reminder of what her ancestors had once been, amphibians who had emerged onto land in an era before history. But on the distant planet they were heading to, her descendants would need no such adaptations.

  The genetic templates had already been decided, the modifications planned across generations. When her people finally set foot on that distant world, they would be something different. Something built for survival on their new world.

  Varesh-Til was old for her kind, her wrinkled skin and graying frond-like hair showing their age. What she did now was not for herself, but was necessary for the survival of her race. The Unmaking would never stop, but perhaps she could give her people a chance if they fled far enough.

  A fighting chance was all she could ask for.

  She turned her gaze to the holo-display, where Earth hovered in a digital rendering. It was so full of life. A true paradise teeming with creatures that did not yet know their purpose or place in the universe. The primitive apex lifeform was crude and undeserving of the utopia it inhabited.

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  She did not hate them. There was no cruelty in her actions, only necessity. It was the same logic that required culling a herd when the land could not sustain it. The Seeder System AI would ensure that some remained, reshaping the survivors into caretakers for the world that would one day belong to her children.

  And then maybe… a chance at producing an Anchor. She shook her head, chastising herself for her emotional outburst. It was very unlike her. Not even in her most optimistic calculations had she been able to predict the creation of an Anchor Entity, but she would give her people a chance, and at least a bit more time.

  She’d created the Seeder System, an instrument of death and life, in her own image. Some might interpret it as vanity, but she had long since abandoned any sense of self-importance. Only survival mattered, and she wouldn’t place that burden on anyone else.

  Her four-fingered hand paused over the final command. A flicker of something unspoken crossed her mind. Guilt? No. Regret, perhaps. But the alternative was extinction. And so, with the weight of her people’s survival on her shoulders, Varesh-Til activated the deployment.

  The process had begun. There was no going back.

  On the display before her, the rendering changed to show the geographic locations the Seeder System would embed itself and form a mesh network that spanned the globe. Even with geological shifting that would occur in the interim, she had unwavering certainty that her calculations were correct — every variable accounted for. Earth would be under their control long after her lifetime, but also long before her descendants arrived. And the current inhabitants would never know.

  Varesh-Til pushed back from the workstation and turned to look out the large floor-to-ceiling window to take in the fleet that followed her flagship. An array of ships, all serving different purposes, were fanned out behind the flagship. The remnant of her people. Millions of beings that trusted her to guide them to a utopia of her making.

  She observed placidly as the Seeder System AI payload detached from the ship adjacent to hers and shot forward in a blinding streak of light that left an afterimage in her sensitive vision. She closed both sets of eyelids. Varesh-Til could rest now. Her purpose was fulfilled and hurtling toward Earth.

  “We will persist,” she hummed in her low, warbling language before turning away.

  ? Consumer of the Fourth Anchor ?

  by Miko Melina

  A little monster with a big heart and an even bigger appetite.