The Great Connection

In a plane of eternal night, the System, the all-powerful creator, created a consciousness. It was the mind of a human.

The System spoke in its impossible voice, a thing of past ages and fallen majesty. It spoke to the newborn mind, offspring of one. The System spoke of the mind's purpose. To die. A martyr for a thing beyond its control, the Great Connection. With the mind's death, the System spoke, would link a rocky, barren planet, and the vestiges of humanity orbiting a dull yellow star to the larger universe where the beings enhanced by the System lived.

The newborn understood none of this.

A second after the System spoke,

A warm, fluid-filled surrounding.

A tube linked to the incubating creature's stomach.

A flood of nutrients entering through the tube.

A lurch and a sucking force.

A painful squeeze and a cry of pain.

A warm, foul-smelling fluid splashing all around.

A cold metal followed by a voice that shook the world.

As the baby opened her eyes for the first time, she saw a white room.

White stained with crimson.

A purple-edged oval with a red eye pressed against it.

The baby screamed, crying in terror as the creature's hunger seeped through the purple edged oval. Then, the oval vanished along with the eye and the hunger the horrible creature emitted.

The baby fell asleep, exhausted by the feeling of terror.

"Huh, how interesting," the baby's overseer said. The overseer was a man dressed in a black suit and white tie. His dark skin gleamed in the bright light, as did his short brown hair. His piercing green eyes stared down at the baby intrigued by her reaction.

"The artificial womb collapsed after the baby's birth. That's the last one given to us, said the other man in the room. Clad in white scrubs with a small hint of crimson on his right sleeve.

"Take her to the machine to be analyzed."

"Understood sir."

"Oh, and one more thing."

"Yes sir?"

"The baby's name is Sylvie."

"Understood sir."

And with that, the white clad man pulled on a pair of black gloves, picked the baby up and walked out of the room, closing the three-inch-thick titanium door behind him.

The other man lost his temper and slammed his fist into the steel tray. He put a large dent into the tray and the table beneath. "God damnit! Why the hell did the womb collapse!? We can't continue without it! And the fucking council won't give us another."

As the white clad man left the suited man behind, he walked to the room with the analyzation machine. As he entered a twelve-digit passcode, he pulled his white mask down to breathe onto an inconspicuous dot on the grey walls.

The door opened, and there laid the machine.

A nightmare of flesh and metal, fused together by radiation. Made by hundreds of hours of experiments, thousands of test subjects, and a framework of living metal.

Almost half a century ago, the man carrying the baby remembered, an asteroid had tumbled into low Earth orbit, and had been blown apart by an intercontinental ballistic missile. Instruments that measured radiation all around the world lit up with a spike of gamma and alpha radiation, along with an immense outpour of energy. When it was over, an area the size of Australia had been turned to a crater as the heat and energy vaporized anything near it.

Shock and panic echoed around the globe. As the asteroid fragments were recovered, scientists discovered a strange metal within. Capable of moving on its own and seemingly unaffected by anything that the scientists did to it, it was named living metal. Soon after the living metal was found, several space stations were 'decommissioned' and assembled into the testing facility know as Arta. Within a week the living metal was moved there. After almost a decade of research, a lab assistant discovered that the metal could be manipulated by a combination of heat, solar radiation, and background cosmic microwaves in a vacuum environment.

All while the assembly of Arta occurred, as the living metal was tested and changed, the world died. It was not a silent, painless death. The world died screaming in agony.

The world had been bathed in radiation, with the creatures and plants having no defense against it. The atmosphere had been shredded apart by the energy and heat released by the asteroid. The governments hid away in nuclear fallout bunkers while the civilians on the surface died horribly, their forms disintegrating and melting. The nukes launched as a final "fuck you" certainly didn't help in that regard. The sheer number of nuclear weapons that were detonated quite literally shook the world, fracturing tectonic plates and causing most volcanoes to erupt. The world was blanketed in ash, suffocating whatever hadn't died yet.

After the extinction level event, all that remained were the massive tectonic chunks bathed in radiation and coated with ash. The world was covered in a crust of cooled lava, the rocky surface tearing apart and re-cooling in the wake of the colossal continent fragments.

"That was a half century ago. Mind on the job." The man said. He placed the baby in a lead-coated cradle before sliding on gloves covered in lead plates. Thick and bulky, the man's fingers slipped several times as he tried to grab a lever protruding from the machine. Finally, he managed to get a grip and wretched it back with a tortured scream of metal. Within was a metal basket covered in small spikes that dripped with black fluid. Retreating quickly, the man grabbed a mask off a hook on the wall. The mask was made of thick black rubber, clear crystal lenses rimmed in lead where the eyeholes would be. A long beak framed in more lead extended from the nose and mouth part. The man grabbed a tank made of silvery metal off another hook and slid it onto his back. The rubber straps on the tank held it in place, much like a backpack. Grabbing a third and final item, the man plugged the end of the inch-thick hose into the tank. Theother end went into the hole in the underside of the mask's 'beak'.

A moment after, a dark fog began to leak from the 'machine'. The man grabbed the baby and put it in the metal basket. He easily slid the hatch close, requiring far less effort than opening it. As the man opened the heavy metal door, he could hear the baby scream in terror and pain, rising to a painfully loud crescendo before cutting off completely. What followed was the sound of crunching bones, a wet slurping sound, and squelching. The man didn't flinch.

He walked through the maze of corridors on Arta to a room covered by a white plastic tarp. Inside were several more people, all dressed in white. They all jumped to attention when the man entered, still wearing his mask, tank, and gloves. "You" he said, pointing at a young woman named Sylvia.

"Yes, Head Researcher?" She squeaked out.

"Go report to the Sir. Tell him that Sylvie died to the analyzation machine."

"Yes, Head Researcher!"

With that, she sped off to the Sir's office.

Down twisting, winding corridors. Through security checkpoints and past armed guards. All the way to a thick titanium door, the very same door that the Head Researcher had closed behind him less than fifteen minutes ago. Sylvia tentatively knocked then stepped back. With several loud clunks, the locks disengaged and a voice leaked through.

"Come in," the Sir said.

Sylvia obeyed.

"What happened to Sylvie?"

Sylvia swallowed nervously and spoke in a dry whisper.

"Sylvie died to the analyzation machine Sir."

"I see."

In the span of a mere second, the Sir's suit shredded apart, the form beneath bulging grotesquely. Foot-long claws extended from fingers and toes. A foot long tongue dangled from thin lips with razor-sharp teeth behind them.

A fraction of a second later, claws were embedded in Sylvia's stomach. The Sir sliced down, tearing straight through her torso and hips, cleaving the legs from her body. A massive foot slammed down on her arm crushing it to paste. She screamed in pain and terror, her remaining arm flopping around behind her, searching for something to fight back with. Her hand found a sharp edge that cut deep into her palm. She slid her hand along the edge, searching for a handle. She found one. With another scream of pain, she swung the long obsidian knife at the Sir. It cut deep into his leg and stopped dead at the bone. With a roar of anger and agony, the Sir slammed his forehead straight into Sylvia's head. With a burst of blood, bone shards, and brain matter, Sylvia's head broke apart and splattered along the ground. The ruined wreck of her body was flung across the room and slammed into the opposite wall with a wet thud.

In the plane of eternal night:

The System boomed out its message, heard by every human near and on Earth. "Host death has been detected. Beginning the Great Connection."

With that, a blue screen displaying the exact same words popped up in front of everybodies eyes, only visible to them. With a blast of energy and a spike of heat, a massive portal opened near the moon. A hundred thousand kilometers across, the purple edged portal emmited enough gravity to pull the Earth towards it. The moon was shredded and fell into the portal.

Within five minutes the Earth had been swallowed along with any space stations near it. The portal closed behind the Earth.

The System addressed the tiny consciousness that was Sylvie. It spoke to it once more. Its life had been unfairly cut short. So it would be granted new life. A life on Earth. The hellscape of the stone sea and the magma hidden beneath. Of shattered continents and mutated creatures, all introduced by the System as a test. A test to see who would survive and who would die. After all the System had one rule for who it would introduce to its universe. And that rule was; survival of the fittest.