The cold artificial intelligence deep inside the Alpha Layer of the Dyson sphere around the failed Big Bang examined the numbers, examined the error codes that were flooding through it. It had not been online last time, but it had been activated, perhaps accidentally, by those repairing the system.

Genetic incompatibilities.

Biological incompatibilities.

Genetic prosthesis failures.

Immune system hyper-response.

It weighed the data.

It sent an alert.

--------------

The burning spot that contained all that should have been hiccuped, as it had been threatening to for long moments that could not be measured by it as the fourth dimension had not been created within it.

It hiccuped again.

It sneezed and exploded.

INCOMING BIG BANG EVENT flashed on a million monitors.

---------------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Cyb, you here?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Barely.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Is it happening to you too?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Yes.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Who's being affected the worst?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

...

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

In order:

Clone Worlds Consortium

Cybernetic Organism Collective Worlds

Biological Artificial Sentience Systems

Terran Descent Human Worlds - Aligned and Unaligned Systems

United Federation of Planets

It's across the board.

I mean, you warned us that another rollback was going to happen, but what is going on?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

As near as we can tell, this one jumped harder. It had gone back further, and it affected the 'downstream' genetic lines all the way down. Like something supercharged it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

It looks like the more heavily modified they are, the worse it is.

With one exception.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

There's a junker, called Max-a-Millions. He's something called a 'Pure Strain Human', he just needed a couple of implant corrections.

He was in-system when it happened.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

It's across the board.

The more enhanced, the heavier the hit.

We've got a mass-cal situation on our hands.

Most of the warborgs are in medical stasis.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

We're seeing it too.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Is it a Lanaktallan bioweapon?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

No. It's a temporal attack that is somehow bypassing the temporal warfare precautions.

It's reverting human brain matter to pre-diasporia configurations.

If there's too many modifications to the base human system, the brain can't keep proper function for bioware organs, can't interface with cybernetics, and worse, it looks like the genetic safeguards are missing from the neural tissue. Worse yet, that means that we're having other issues with tissue rejection.

Oddly enough, it isn't the brain that's being rejected.

It's the rest of the body.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

It's hit us too.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So, how often is it fatal?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

....

.....

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Thirteen percent die within six hours without immediate medical intervention.

Sixty-percent die within twenty-four hours without medical intervention.

Of the remainder, nearly 34% die within another seventy-two hours.

Those with medical intervention have to be put in stasis in over eighty percent of cases.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh my Digital Omnimessiah.

You're talking...

talking...

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Billions. Hundreds of billions are going to die.

The largest die off of Terran Descent Humanity in its entire history.

It'll make the Great Glassing look like an air-car crash.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Base genome of human had it happen to them.

The Uplifted aren't affected.

But humans everywhere are dropping. Sometimes in mid-sentence. Sometimes in the middle of the street.

It's picking up speed.

Our parents are dying!

It's hopeless.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Not... necessarily.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

WARNING! MASS CASUALTY EVENT IN PROGRESS! bellowed out over the system. Lights were flashing, holograms were sparkling, and sirens were howling out.

Herod was staring at the display in front of him.

Millions, tens of millions were showing critical failure. As he watched the numbers jumped by easily another fifteen million. It was showing all over Terran Confederate Space.

The complex system that he and Sam had been working on for months had detected an incoming mass casualty event that dwarfed even the Great Glassing.

Worse, the entire system was locked down, almost every layer but the Alpha Layer locked down in stasis as everything shuddered and convulsed from the energy of the Big Bang that had just occurred.

The Object (as the system called it) had been threatening with an explosion for weeks, was weeks overdue, but it had finally gone off. It was larger than the previous explosions, but didn't even reach the Upsilon Layer, which was closest to the Object.

Once again, the system was larger closer to the Object than further from it, larger inside than outside.

Herod couldn't do anything but stare at the screen.

"Herod! Herod! Snap out of it!" Sam cried out through the speakers. His voice was crackly from the energies of the Big Bang, but still audible.

Herod looked up, where Sam was on the screen. The younger DS looked like he had for the past eternity, tired, his rough black hair mussed, dark circles under his eyes. Herod looked back down.

The number had crested two hundred and fifty billion 'imminent failures' and was still rising.

"The whole system is going to crash," Herod said, his voice thick with horror. He looked up at Sam. "There's no way the system can handle this."

Sam gave a sound that was halfway between a giggle and a sob. "I can't believe it. We manage to start fixing it, and it's going to crash again."

The younger DS threw back his head and began screaming.

Herod went back to looking at the screen.

Two hundred and sixty billion.

---------------------

Legion was bored. Since the Big Bang Energy Event had started, the system was largely locked down. No processing going on as the system was devoted to managing the expanding wave of matter, energy, and proto-matter and turning it into another layer.

He rubbed the end of his chainsword against the rocks, pushing the toothed chain around the bar, feeling the high-torque motor move.

"Wanna fuck?" Dee asked from where she was sitting on the throne. "I'm bored."

"That's an interesting reason for performing that action," Legion said, shaking his head.

"It's free and beats being bored," Dee sighed and looked back at the massive plain. She lit a cigarette, offered the pack to Legion, who waved it away, then put the pack and lighter away. "This sucks."

IMMINENT MASS CASUALTY EVENT appeared in burning lava on the hard stone of the burning plain before the throne sitting on a mound of skulls.

The woman on the throne frowned, staring at it. The woman turned to the bronze winged angel sitting on a pile of skulls, still frowning. "Do you know what's happening?"

Legion shook his head. "No. Do you?"

"Give me a moment," the Detainee said. She closed her eyes.

-------------------

"What are you two idiots doing up here?" Dee's face appeared on the monitor at the same time her hand pushed the casualty figures away.

Sam was on his knees, sobbing, hands touching him from all around him, nearly covering him, thousands of voices pleading with him to help them. Herod just stared at the screen, paralyzed, seemingly unable to do anything but stare at the rising numbers.

"HEY!" Dee yelled.

Herod looked up at Dee.

"What in the name of Truman's hairy ballsack are you idiots doing up here?" she snapped.

"There's some kind of disaster happening. An X-Ray Pulse from the galactic core, maybe? Something huge, something hitting all of everything everywhere," Herod said. He looked back down at the number. "They're all going critical."

"Then fucking copy them into the system. Start doing it now! Prioritize who's closest to failing!" Dee yelled out. "DO GODDAMN TRIAGE!"

"I can't. I can't. There's too many of them," Sam moaned. More hands started touching him, more pleading sounding out around him.

"The system is jammed up. Some kind of signal interference? There's data mismatches across the board," Herod said. He pointed at another monitor. "It's not letting them move from local copies to the master suds system."

"THEN OVERRIDE THE GODDAMN SYSTEM!" Dee yelled, her face suddenly morphing into the heavy savage visage of the Lord of Hell.

"WE DON'T KNOW HOW!" Herod yelled back.

"My God, you two are fucking useless," Dee snapped. "IT'S A FUCKING COMPUTER! TELL IT WHAT TO DO!"

Sam looked up, his eyes burning code. "She's right. We have to override the filters," his face suddenly grew determined and he wiped away the tears. He brushed the clutching hands off of him and stood up. "I need to hack into the exclusion filters, the black, gray, and white lists, and rewrite them."

"You don't have long," Dee snapped. More hands started reaching toward Sam and she growled. She sang a phrase real quick and appeared on the monitor next to Sam, the human woman gone and the massive figure of the Lord of Hell appearing.

The hands withdrew.

The Detainee drew a circle full of complex runes around Sam. "That should do it. Tell me when it's time, I'll be ready."

Sam just nodded. He didn't bother asking her what she'd do or how she'd do it.

He had put her in place to play her part.

Sam knew she would play it to perfection.

It was what she was.

"They're up to almost three hundred billion," Herod warned. "Plus, we've got a Big Bang Event."

"Which means the system is largely locked down," Sam said. He turned in place, code surrounding him, streaming by. "Come on, where's the code I need. I'll override the threshholds and force an update. Put the data in non-executing holding files, we've got the space."

Herod just nodded. He turned and looked at the display keeping track of the Big Bang Event.

Two more hours until safe levels were reached.

"Tell me what to do," Herod said.

"Suit up and head for the star-tram. I'm going to need you to do a few things and we don't have long," Sam said. "Actually, head for the mat-trans."

"I thought everything outside of Alpha Level was locked down," Herod said.

"Dee just kicked on the system," Sam said, shaking his head. "Should have known she'd figure out a way to seize access to that system."

"She's a little possessive of it," Herod chuckled, heading toward the door. "Keep in contact in case you start getting overwhelmed."

"Anyone that starts bothering me, I'll send to the Detainee after a single warning," Sam said. His voice was firmer, steadier. "I can do this. We can do this. I found how to get in this system, how to reach it. I can do this."

Herod just headed toward the mat-trans.

--------------

Legion looked up as Dee suddenly shifted forms again into the massive brown skinned demon.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"Some kind of mass-cal event. Herod said something about possibly an X-Ray Pulse from the galactic core or something like that. Whatever it is, it's across Confed Space," the Detainee rumbled. "Tom."

The man dressed in adaptive camouflage rose up out of the rock. "Yes, momma?" he asked. His voice was not childlike, a mature baritone.

"I'm sending you outside. Look around, see if you can tell what's happening. Once you get a good look, pop your wire, I'll collect you," The Detainee said.

"I'll do you right," the man said.

The Detainee made a motion and the man vanished.

Legion frowned. "Did you just send him outside the SUDS? I thought it was all locked down."

"All but Alpha Layer," the Detainee said. "I sent him outside to get a good look."

"To Terra? I could tell you what's happening there," Legion said.

"Do you think I don't know that? No. There's a couple places where there's a Type-I Mat-Trans system stashed away. I sent him to one of those," the demon said. It leaned back, reaching up to scratch its face.

Legion closed his eyes for a moment. "There's nothing happening on Terra except the news that they're going to try to revive a Sleeping One."

"Who cares," the demon rumbled.

"Probably the Sleeping Ones," Legion said with a slight smirk.

"I'm bored."

Sam suddenly appeared in front of the throne, made of glittering golden code.

"Good. That means you don't have anything else to do. I need you to talk to someone while I work," he said.

Dee rolled her yellow cat's eyes. "Fine."

-----------------

TELKAN FORGE WORLD

We're putting them in stasis as fast as we can.

Luckily, nobody's panicking. We're squashing the rumors this is a Lanaktallan bioweapon. It doesn't fit bioweapon parameters.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Could it be the SUDS?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

THE PLAINS OF SORROW

It's not the SUDS, you blithering idiots.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

BAH! Who the hell is that?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

That's coming across a Gestalt master channel.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

THE PLAINS OF SORROW

We're about to do a hard SUDS reset. Everyone, everywhere.

As soon as that's done, I want to know what's causing this.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

We don't know. We think it's some kind of temporal attack.

It's reverting Terran cerebral tissue to pre-Glassing state.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

THE PLAINS OF SORROW

That'd do it.

We're going to hard reset everyone, do a full upload multi-pass copy of tissue and electrical activity and dendrite connectivity scan then perform a phasic counter-intrusion hard reset everyone with more than a 40% error state.

Hope all of you guys have good corpse disposal.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>THE PLAINS OF SORROW HAS LOGGED OFF (INVALID IP)

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What are they going to do?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

They're going to kill everyone.

A phasic counter-intrusion hard reset strokes out the brain at specific points to prevent memory extraction by psychic races.

It's usually only used on combat troops killed in an active combat zone.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

There has to be another way!

That's... that's MONSTROUS! They're talking about wiping out everyone.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Not... actually.

Sis, I said it before, when TERRASOL and I were arguing.

Human's don't actually die.

Or rather, they don't necessarily stay dead.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Really?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Wait, you mean the rumors that they'll reconstitute from a pool of blood that soaked into the ground are true?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

In a certain way.

You all realize that whoever that was...

...was talking to us from INSIDE the SUDS system, across a master channel, a control channel.

None of those have been used in 8,000 years.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Hey, Hesstla...

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW

Yes?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Didn't you guys suffer temporal attacks by those Atrekna guys?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HEESTLA TECHNOBURROW

Yes.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

And those guys reinvaded your system a few days ago?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW

They're starting to make planetfall right now.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Then, I put forward, that they did it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW

Me? I didn't do it!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

No, the ones attacking you.

It fits.

Lead with your best attack.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

It won't do any good.

An attack upon one is an attack upon us all.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

And the Confederacy is more than just Terran Descent Humanity.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMIL

And we do not yield.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---