The institute ascendancy, p.1
The Institute Ascendancy, page 1
PROLOGUE
[MONDAY, 08.19.2030] INTERSTELLAR SPACE
He could sense the presence of the Enemy. They were very close, yet hidden as if behind a veil. This was the mystery that he still had not penetrated.
The Enemy had first been discovered around 300,000 years ago. It was an old species, but nowhere near as old as his own. His was ancient. Sadly, his species had died out millions of years ago, and to the best of his knowledge, he was the last of his kind. Nonetheless, he still had purpose. Two million years ago, he had discovered an adolescent species, which he had adopted as his own. They referred to him as the Ancient Sentient.
Under his guidance, they had grown up to become the founding and dominant species of the Intergalactic Confederation of Planets, which now represented over 10,000 intelligent species, spanning over 1,000,000 planets across three galaxies. It was during their expansion into the Milky Way that they discovered the Enemy.
The Enemy was a parasite, one that could descend on a planet and completely consume it, stripping all its resources in a matter of years. Until recently, the Enemy had not been sapient. They were not intelligent, self-aware, or technologically able. But that had changed a millennium ago when they consumed a world that held an intelligent species and, by some means that he did not understand, had acquired their memories.
Five years ago, the problem got drastically worse when they consumed a planet that held a very intelligent species with nascent faster-than-light technology. They also acquired knowledge of a planet that he knew to be the most important planet in the three galaxies, a planet known as Earth. He could not allow them to consume Earth. If they did, then they would become the masters of the universe.
Recently, it had been discovered that the Enemy was extra-dimensional, meaning they could move between dimensions. That was why the Enemy appeared as smoke, or as dust. They wove between this dimension and four adjacent dimensions, like a snake writhing across the sand.
As he cast his thoughts back to his search, the Ancient Sentient had an epiphany… The Enemy must come from a higher dimension. A different space-time continuum. That’s why they seem to get closer and closer, then fade away without being seen.
He returned to the place where they seemed closest, then cloaked himself and began moving through adjacent dimensions one at a time.
And, there it was, the Enemy home world. Adjusting his senses, he discovered that here they were solid and shaped something like an Earthly squid or octopus. If the Confederation brought the fight here, this blight on the universe could be stopped once and for all.
APPEARANCE
[Tuesday, 08.20.2030, 3:00 PM] KEELE PEAK, MACKENZIE MOUNTAINS, CANADA
It had been a beautiful morning. The air was cold and clear; the Sun blindingly bright; not a cloud in the sky. The perfect day for a summit attempt.
Alexi Santos had led the team that made the summit today. They were halfway decent mountaineers and had done a respectable job making the final ascent up the southeast ridge of the mountain.
They were now about halfway back down, and the weather was turning against them. Clouds had formed in the sky and the wind had started blowing. Following standard protocol, Alexi doublechecked the climbing ropes that bound the party together. Then she took the lead following the last of the ridgeline back toward base camp. As the storm intensified, the team’s mettle was tested. Several men fell or were blown off the ridge, but their lines held them together. And each time, the one who had fallen was helped, or pulled, back up.
…
Alexi was a Confederation android, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driving a human avatar. Her official job was head of the outfitting concession at the Intergalactic Confederation of Planets Embassy in Northwest Territories, Canada. As part of the Confederation’s treaty with Canada, they’d been granted a 100 square mile tract of land in the Mackenzie Mountains. It was a very remote and inhospitable tract of land located ‘close’ to the geographic center of the human population on Earth. Its remoteness made the land available. Its location reduced travel time to all but a few of the world’s capitals.
In granting this tract, the Canadian government had asked the Confederation to allow tourism to this part of their country and to offer outfitting services for the adventurers that wanted to travel there.
Amazingly, no humans had come forward to set up this operation. So Alexi, a Confederation citizen, had volunteered. Alexi rose to fame during the liberation of North Korea. She’d been part of the team that went in to clean up after the arrest of the former dictator. She’d helped set up the prisoner of war camps that housed the invasion troops, which had been staged near the South Korea border. She then led the teams that liberated North Korea’s notorious slave labor camps.
The outfitting concession had a half dozen certified expedition leaders, but Alexi had been the first approved by the Canadian commission that had oversight responsibilities for tourism in Canada.
…
As the expedition approached the last difficult descent before their shelter, massive gusts hit the team. It was not clear how anyone could make it down this cliff face without being blown away.
Alexi, who had figured out how to shelter thousands of troops in cold winter environments, never left home in the Mackenzies without bringing a shelter with her. She pulled a box from her pack that looked a lot like the power pack that came with the average portable computer. With her team gathered around her, she anchored it in the foundation dimension and activated it. A dome, maybe 20 ft. in diameter, glistened to life around them. The wind stopped, the snow deflected off the dome, and warmth from the small heater settled in.
Alexi used her implants to connect into Embassy security. She reported her situation and they advised her of the updated forecast. The blizzard would last another two days. Twenty feet of snow were predicted for the mountain. The center of the storm had stalled to the southeast of them, so the wind would be coming from the northeast.
This is trouble, Alexi thought. The wind will come up over the steep part of the ridge and deposit all its snow right on top of us.
By her calculations, a thirty- to fifty-foot snow drift was about to form right here. The shield could hold that weight. It, plus their personal thermal shields, would even keep them warm. Nonetheless, they would suffocate with no way to exchange air through the snow.
“We can’t stay here,” Alexi shouted.
The men looked at her incredulously.
Then reversing herself, she said. “Stay here. I can get help in time.” Then, rope and carabiners in hand, she walked through the shield into the storm.
…
As Alexi first emerged, the wind nearly blew her away. But placing her back to the dome wall, she shimmied around to the leeward side of the dome until she found the first anchor point that was somewhat sheltered from the wind. She clipped a rope to the shield’s anchor point, then walked to the edge of the cliff—the one they couldn’t climb down—and leaped.
The mountaineers in the shelter saw her being swept up by the wind and immediately despaired. What they didn’t know was that Alexi wore a Confederation climbing harness, an anti-gravity device similar to the Fabulous Flying Overalls that had made Sergeant George Butler famous. The climbing harness had an anti-grav drive that allowed Alexi to fly, regardless of the direction of the wind.
Navigating the storm was still tricky, but she made her way down to the dome at base camp and anchored the climbing rope she had brought. She clipped onto the rope, now anchored at both ends, and used the anti-grav drive to propel herself back up to the mini dome on the leeward side of the ridge. Snow had already piled up several feet.
Still clipped onto the rope, she walked through the shield to find pandemonium and despair inside. The temperature had been dropping and the snow piling up. The men were convinced they were going to die.
“Guys. Man up,” she said. “I’ve connected a rope between the domes. The dome at base camp is safe. I can shuttle you down one-by-one. It’ll be a wee bit bumpy, but a great ride nonetheless.”
She beamed. “Who’s first?”
A moment passed without any volunteers. Alexi was dismayed. Staying here was certain death. By comparison, riding down was safer than sitting in a rocking chair and watching the world go by, just more fun.
Seeing that none of these wusses was going to volunteer, she grabbed the closest member of the team, clipped him on, and then dragged him out of the dome and over the precipice.
Poor Henry, she thought, as he screamed the whole way down. But, what a wuss.
She purposely came in high, penetrating the shield, then made a smooth landing. Henry still fell when she let go of him. Shaking her head, she said, “Henry! Make yourself useful. Make some coffee for the others and turn on some lights. It’ll be getting dark before too long. Next one will be down in about five minutes.” Then she ran out of the dome and flew back to the others.
One by one, the men came down. On each return she found the snow against the mini dome stacked higher and higher. As she came in to get the last member of the team, disaster struck. The rope she’d been using to guide her flight suddenly went slack. Panicked that she might lose the rope altogether, she grabbed it where it passed through the carabiner she’d used to clamp on. She quickly tied on to the rope in a way that would prevent it from coming off completely, but in the process lost her bearings.
Suddenly the rope snapped tight, knocking the breath out of her. As she came back to her senses, Alexi couldn’t hel
As the blizzard intensified, visibility dropped to zero. With no other option, Alexi started reeling herself in hand over hand, using the anti-grav drive to relieve the pressure of the wind while still keeping the rope taut.
…
Jack was worried. It had been a long time since Alexi left with Steve. Something must have gone wrong and he was running out of time, the mini dome was nearly covered in snow. And he was freezing.
…
Alexi suddenly hit snow. She’d been pulling herself in, but here the rope was just coming out of a wall of snow. After a moment of puzzlement, it occurred to her. This must be the mini dome, covered in snow.
I can use the taut rope like a knife. She thought, directing the anti-grav drive to move up and down, left and right. Slowly, she sliced off layers of snow until the rope finally hit the dome and she could see the light within.
“Yes!” she shouted. It was indeed the mini dome. Jack was still alive. As she pulled herself in the last 20 feet, the wind suddenly shifted and she went flying into the wall of stone to the northwest of the dome. She’d placed the mini dome here intentionally, hoping proximity to this part of the cliff would give them some shelter from the wind.
There was a loud crack and searing pain in her right leg. Ironically, hitting the wall killed her momentum and blocked most of the wind. She fell twenty feet straight down, landing on the injured leg, which bent unnaturally. She struggled to get up on her remaining good leg, took two hops, then fell into the dome and passed out.
…
Jack saw Alexi fall next to the dome and went to help, but the dome was not keyed to allow him to pass through it. As she fell over into the dome, he grabbed her and pulled her the rest of the way in. Looking at her leg, he saw that it was mangled and bleeding copious quantities of blood. He got the Confederation first aid kit, then wrapped her leg as they’d been instructed during safety training. When it was secure, he pushed the button on the wrap that would tighten it, isolating the broken bone and infusing nanobots. When he finished, he saw that he was sitting in a puddle of her blood, which had begun to freeze. Then, shivering uncontrollably, he passed out.
…
Alexi woke from a very pleasant dream. She’d been flying on a rope, using it to slice up snow. Where do dreams like that come from? she wondered.
She opened her eyes and took in the scene. Jack was out cold and covered in partially clotted, frozen blood. “What the hell happened to you, Jack?” she asked. Rousing herself, Alexi attempted to help him. That’s when she realized she was the one that was injured. Jack was the one that had applied the first aid. “Thank you, Jack,” she said out loud, then “What a wuss.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, are we Jack?” she said to his inert body. “Let’s take inventory. The anti-grav drive must have been broken when I hit that wall. Going to need to fix that.”
Scanning the perimeter of the dome, she noticed that they still had Jack’s rope and another one. Must be Henry’s. I did yank him out of here kind of suddenly, she thought.
“Looks like we have enough rope, if I can fix the grav-drive, Jack,” she said. Jack was still out cold, but talking to him helped keep her calm.
Slowly and awkwardly, Alexi took off her parka, then her outer mountaineering shirt, revealing the anti-grav harness. It looked more or less like a standard climbing harness.
Slowly, and somewhat painfully, she removed the grav-drive. The problem was immediately obvious. The power unit was damaged. The casing had cracked, breaking the connector that powered the lift generators. She disconnected the power unit from the rest of the harness and was relieved to see that the lift generators and their connectors were intact. The part that had broken was the socket on the power unit.
“Good news Jack. I only need to swap out the power unit, and I never go anywhere without at least one spare.”
She grabbed her parka, fished through it until she found the spare power unit, and then attached it to the harness. The unit beeped. It was alive and functional. “Looks like we’re back in business, Jack,” she said, somewhat surprised that he hadn’t come back around yet.
Alexi put the harness back on, secured it, and then levitated up off the ground. Her leg made several loud popping noises. “Not liking the sound of that, Jack,” she said.
She went over to Jack and spotted his problem almost immediately. He was suffering severe hypothermia. At some point the power pack on his thermal shield must have either come loose or been broken. She patted him down looking for where he had put his power pack. He had the type that strapped on, so could be located anywhere as long as it was in direct contact with his skin.
Slowly, she worked his parka off and started patting him down again.
“Found it!” she shouted. Jack had placed the unit in the small of his back. It was held in place by a strap that wrapped around his torso just below the rib cage. The strap had come loose. Alexi quickly tested the unit to make sure it still had power. It did. She readjusted the strap and confirmed that his thermal shield was now active. A quick scan showed that Jack’s core temperature had dropped to 85 degrees.
“Oh, Jack. You’re in trouble, my friend. Let’s see if we can save you.”
Moving as quickly as she could, Alexi redressed Jack, then herself. Not wanting a repeat of her interview with the rock wall, Alexi reached through the dome from the inside and tied a new piece of rope to the anchor point on the exterior of the dome. Then from her rescue supplies, she put a buoyancy assist belt on Jack, reducing his ‘weight’ to about 30 lbs. The beauty of the buoyancy assist was that it offset gravitational pull on his body without applying a force vector the way the anti-grav harness did. She strapped Jack onto her back using four carabiners to lock him in place. Then, ropes attached, she ‘dialed’ the anti-grav to max and went flying out of the dome into the storm.
…
“Hey guys. I think we’re in trouble. Check out the rope. It’s slack and flopping around.”
Several of the other guys looked at the anchor. The rope had clearly broken.
“Don’t worry,” Phil said. “She found her way down the first time. She can do it again.”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “Visibility is terrible. The wind is a lot worse. And it’s starting to get dark. We need to do something.”
“Dude, none of us is Alexi. If she’s having trouble, then we have no chance.”
Henry started pacing. It always helped him think.
“Lights!” he said with conviction. “In a storm, your own lights are almost worthless because they light up the snow around you. But someone else’s lights can help because the snow brightens where they are. How many lights do we have? Can we aim them toward the mountain?”
Someone else piped up. “What about the radio? Can we call for help? Surely the Confederation has some type of technology to help?”
Once he’d snapped on the last of the lights, Henry started searching around and found the spare communicator. He had no idea how to operate it. It seemed that Alexi just talked into it and it worked.
“Hello,” Henry said. Nothing. He started tapping on it, whistling into it, pressing every surface, saying random distress words… “Mayday! Mayday!” Then, “SOS! SOS!”
One of the other guys said, “Try 9-1-1.”
“There are no buttons, idiot!” Henry said, starting to get a bit testy.
“I meant, say ‘9-1-1.’”
“Oh. Good idea,” Henry said contritely. “Sorry about that.”
Then he shouted… “9-1-1. 9-1-1” …into the device.
“Embassy Operator. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
Everyone was dumbfounded that this had worked. Then Henry quickly explained to the operator what was going on.
AMBASSADOR’S OFFICE
“Michael, we may have a problem.” Pam came into his office. Michael served as Ambassador from the Intergalactic Confederation of Planets to the Peoples of Earth. He was Lorexian but occupied a human avatar. Pam was his assistant. She was an android. They had worked together for about 20 years.
