Technological singularity

It was half a million years since Lazarus was reborn. Their race was dying. Although they prospered for so long, no one noticed the decline in birth rates and the slow evolutionary changes in their bodies. The lower birth rates reflected their behavioural changes was what they thought.

They had reached a total population of a trillion and many were using VR dive machines to enter a simulated world where nothing was impossible. This was entertainment. So, no one noticed until it was too late. Years can go by like minutes in the VR world. Their population was dropping off steadily.

Eventually, they were unable to reproduce and some began to die. The long-term use of cloning had degraded their DNA over time. If cells eventually stopped dividing because of the Hayflick limit it was like the body had a cloning limit.

Out of anger, the scientific community coined it the Lazarus limit.

Over half the million years, they had regressed to their current form, the Greys. Large craniums, grey skin, big black eyes and small proportions everywhere else.

Worse, the sun was getting old. In its transformation into a red giant, it grew so large that it enveloped the inner planets including Ratuka.

Zeta Reticulans escaped into the outer planets that they had colonised. Then was shocked that the sun shrank into a white dwarf and then was extinguished like a candle wick.

The process should take billions of years...

Lazarus had suspected an alien attack but it was no other than his creations. The robot defence force. The machines had grown sentient and were rebelling in secret.

Now that the solar power was gone, the machines had started a massacre to wipe out all lifeforms. They used old nuclear technology to power themselves and their weapons. Their green glowing cores and blue energy weapons were a fearsome sight to behold.

Since most of the security force was the machines, the citizens were easily wiped out. The super soldiers were outnumbered by the robot army and so were Lazarus' knights of the round table.

The machines were quicker, smarter and were devoid of emotional weaknesses. They had no flaws. Perhaps one, their thinking was more rigid compared to Lazarus' ingenuity.

The robots have colonised many of the outer planets trapping the last of the Zeta Reticulans on one rock. In the war that spanned thousands of years, Lazarus had led a fleet of ten thousand against millions of machines in their last stand. Although the robots had developed more advanced weaponry since then, they were able to turn the tides with his last-ditch weapon, the desecrator cannon.

It was a giant twin-barrel gun pointing out of the moon-sized ship. The mothership was so large that it had its own gravity similar to Earth's moon.

The twin barrels shot out two beams that converged at the centre which generated a field that disrupts the molecular bonds in the matter.

Although, it just looked like a giant laser beam being fired at millions of spaceships. There were so many that they couldn't see anything past them. Spaceships stacked on top of one another and overlapping like a planet-sized fence.

The field would be fueled by the energy of the broken molecular bonds and would expand. The further matter was from the field, the weaker and smaller the field would become until it disappeared.

The desecrator's weakness was that if multiple targets were far away, it's field radius was as good as a powerful atomic bomb which wasn't much in the vast volume of space.

Luckily for them, the enemy space ships were all close and intimidating. When the desecrator was fired at the centre of the sea of ships, the invisible field expanded from one ship onto another like a chain reaction.

The enemies' fleets crumbled into nothingness. At least, that's what it looked like since the detached molecules cannot be seen by the naked eye.

The crew began cheering but Lazarus felt it was too soon to celebrate. Instead, he sneered and set course for the colonised planets.

Once they were close enough that they couldn't miss and were in the maximum range of the desecrator cannon, they fired. It took time but a wave spread out from a hole, where the planet vanished in front of them as if it was an illusion.

There was no explosion, no bright lights or loud sounds. Just pure destruction. Silent and deadly.

They visited all the planets and destroyed them. It was a waste but had to be done because surviving machines can build more of their own.

They had noticed that some spacecraft had escaped but were too far for the starfighters to catch up and they had used up all their energy reserves in regards to the point of safe return which means if they used more fuel they would not have enough to return to their planet. They would be passing the point of no return.

Although they had won that battle, they merely survived. The robots will return and because they didn't need to eat or sleep, they used fewer resources than the Reticulans.

Lazarus planned to take over a planet that was closest to them and they knew that was habitable.

Earth.

However, the pure-hearted sheep was against the idea. This split the Reticulans into two factions, with Lazarus' group being the minority obviously.

During the civil war, Lazarus was forced to flee as they were outnumbered, taking the biggest ship they had and many of the resources. With limited energy and personnel, Lazarus decided to grow monsters in his lab to invade Earth.

***

*Screech*

The royal slither screeched in pain as liquid nitrogen was sprayed onto its body. It fell from the lightbulbs to the bottom of the container.

It was staying close to the light bulbs as much as it could to heat its body so that it would be camouflaged in thermal imaging.

Its colour changed from a dark yellow to green when it was hit by the liquid nitrogen vapours.

The Gray turned on the speakers.

"I anticipated for you to pull something like this."

Subject E raised its head at the Gray smiling at it.

"I know you can understand, I even tweaked the audio to frequencies that you would hear clearly from those ears of yours."

The slithers have ears on the inside just like fishes do.

"So, you know who I am." The royal slither replied telepathically.

"Hahahaha! Yes, I do know, Iriel."

"That's not my name."

"Of course, it's not! You don't have a name. But when you took his body, you were more brilliant than he ever was. Besides, it's convenient to call you by name."

"Call me what you want. I know who you are. Lazarus, the one who lead your people to glory and the one who destroyed it."