Upon exiting the Stargate , the first thing the Andromedan delegate notices is the punishing gravity . The next thing she notices are the diminutive humanoids , all of them merely six feet tall . They move about the equipment as if unaffected by the gravity .

Some of the other alien delegations are here as well . Lords are bent over , steel colossi rendered immobile . She sees an anthromorph in a flight jacket and nun·s habit , holding a device .

"Do you need any anti-gravity Ka?" she shouts over the voluminous din of the aircraft hangar .

"Na , na ." She declines , doing her best not to wobble . "I think I·ll be okay ."

"Skaði ," she tells her . "Shout my name if you need anything ." Then , turning to a metal colossus , "Do you need any anti-gravity Ka?"

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The walk thru the facility is majestic . Starting from the large aircraft hangar that housed the stargate , they proceed thru a glass tunnel with an aquarium built around it . Orcas swim amidst the exotic arctic fish .

"Now , here . What it came down to , is there were a bunch of extraterrestrial organizations that were claiming dominion over Terra ," the hostess explained , as the group walked , about the necessity of the Conference , "and yet none of them knew what human was or why it was here . Some of them reacted violently , by flaying the exotic species until it figured out what it was doing there . It was a bit of a red flag .

"Some people were saying Human was a slave race , made dumber and shorter-lived than the Igigi . Others said they were a stock for psionic super solders . The key bit here is that none of them were sure .

"Humanity is a science project , and it isn·t their science project . The creation of a ten-fingered species and erasing all traces of the previous civilization t which fell to a civil war between base-60 systems and binary systems k was a DihTech Space Project .

"When the extraterrestrial expedition came to Terra circa 3112 BCE , of which ," she dangles her ID card from the lanyard around her neck , "i was one , there were a minimum of three delegations , the Sirians, Aryans, Pleiadians . That·s what it took to travel across space , three constellatory supergovernments holding together a shaky alliance . Since colonizing the planet , it has been rare to see these factions co-mingling , as the stress of the War and the Voyage caused extreme animosity between them .

"So!" She jumps a bit and claps her hands . "What we came to was that if you were human , that is , that if you came from and or identified as the homo sapiens stock that originated on Terra when Orca DNA was spliced into pre-historical Scandinavian hot springs yetis two hundred and fourteen thousand years ago , you were a Terran Indigenous , and if you were born here live here , then extra-Solar colonizing space elves might be a pretty big concern to you ."

"There were extra-Solar colonists who got stuck on Terra long before the Xichulub Meteor Event that ended the dinosaurs culled the previous dominant species in order to inter the entire planetary biomass underground to press oil , so that they could rocket themselves off of our dear super-planet . Those buggers cryoed themselves and set the alarm to wake up when the Space Race hit , somebody else tried to swipe the wrong golf ball , and our planet-trap snapped shut like a pitcher plant . Fuckin· bastards woke up to a room full of us ."

The aquarium tunnel ends and opens up into another flight hangar , this one packed wall to wall with mammoth devices and mecha suits .

"We have a WaveTable[©KhIndustries] . As you can see ," she says , gesturing overtop a wide circular table , parting the ProcedurallyRendered ScreenSaver clouds with a wave of her hand , "it auto-populates the topics we·re talking about . The weather , for example . Local geographical formations ."

Walking from one table to the next , somehow not affected by the gravity at all , the spritely woman zooms on roller shoes across the smooth concrete hangar base .

"These we call HtKhFaDh , that means "Exo-House" . Colloquially known as RadioHeads or MemoryHeads . These suitcase-sized fuckers contain an entire human brain and spinal cord , and enough life support tech to keep it alive . The uninsulated ones here are for telemetry , the insulated ones there are for astral constructs . The ones with the blue stripes on it know you·re there . Spooky Né?"

The tour leads the group past the display table and into an enclosure of glass break-out rooms with clean white Ikea furniture and touch screens on steel cords or crane arms . Interviews were being conducted featuring both humans and various extra-terrestrial species .

"Those supercomupters back there are probability sensors . They·re wired to detect any perturbation in the deep-time environment that indicates that any given person is creating a work of literature or art that will affect the future . The cybernetic hybrid system works on top of an astral construct ststem , which is pretty old , so a lot of agencies have already set their high-water marks .

"Essentially , as soon as a work is in development , there are psions from multiple organizations across entire galactic clusters that start ghost writing on it . And these things are all over the place , we·ve detected them in multiple locations both within Laniakea and beyond . Most of these systems use memoryheads , which click on and start looking for things to influence as soon as the cap fires . Imagine a little gamer in a psychic suitcase that can influence media script writers by looking at checkpoint sensors in its virtual-psionic heads-up display .

"These HUD elements are hooked up to AI cores that can generate a script and pipe it to a strobe , a type of memoryhead that has messages flashed rapidly into its VR helm in order to transmit that data to a target organism . It flashes one word at a time until the target writes it , and then the next , and the next . If the target writes or paints something else , it rewrites the script and starts over full-on . The AI cores are hooked up to Drawing Board , the central repositary of character archetypes which maps those characters based on the activities of their respective Maze Runners . Ya got all that Ka?"

"Ma·am ," a young Terran in white lab coat and clipboard sprints over , "we·ve been analyzing the cephalids· use of dental pain for psychic agonization . It seems like they get other uses out of it as well . We·ve identified slave pools where they train telepaths , and they go easier on these slaves than they do others . We ran a few very careful experiments , and there does seem to be a boundary where the dawnstrength pain has a psychically propulsive effect . Additionally , as we·ve been observing these slaves over long periods of time , they seem to grow endeared to their operators , in a few cases even fighting back against rescue ."

"Good . Keep going . Explore that boundary . You know what to do . Now go ."

Vaulting up a flight of tiny stairs , the genetically-modified black-furred squirrel-human looks inside a massive reactor from a slit of glass in front . She gestures with a rapid sweep of her hand to come up and have a look . Some of the delegates brave the tiny stairs , or float or fly entirely , or wait massively on the hangar floor below .

Deep inside was a Lightbender·s Tesseract , a cube of hyperbolic laser-light woven electromagnetically into a model of a Terran living room . Latex-suited drones in gas masks stimulate a woman thru the veil .

The woman , made of spun golden light , was holding some sort of tablet-stone . Peering intently into it , all focus on the stone . The drone nudged her thigh from inside the vault . Absent mindedly , her legs parted .

"I mean ," the hostess presents , "the Valkyries , the Kyrie of the Hall of Val , have been using this system since pre-Biblical , pre-Flood times , and were using it continuously throughout all the Athenian and Viking ages . All the major battles , Troy , Constantinople , they were all pre-rendered . If you read the books you can actually isolate the portions where the soldiers claim to have seen the gods themselves inhabit the bodies of their comrades and sweep across the battlefield . Come on ."

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"So see now , we·re actually mapping an oneiric intrusion attempt here in real time ." Skaði points to a time graph on a projector .

"Here on September 15th , after we got the perpetrator into a batch of syringe-vine , we see a readout of their information consumption . We see here that numerous simulations were run on a remote server just before midnight , those are a massive volume of allegedly harmless personality tests being run on a library node at quadruple speed during off-time hours . Note that targeting atomized humans was actually forbidden in the Butlerian Jihad , this actor seems to be trying to swim below that detection threshhold .

"Over here , we see erratic sleep patterns in the targeted psychics , indicating interference with their dreamwalkers returning properly . Same day , 18 hours 40, 19 hours 30, 20 hundred hours, 21 hours 20, we again see massive data spikes from runs on library psychics .

"Two days later , on the 17th , here they·re actually making runs on two distinct library psychics at once and interpreting the data in a separate renderer .

"On September 18, 07 hours 30 , an entire phase envelope fills up for a specific simulation , one from the Conan the Barbarian series of all things .

"These bumps and rises here are additional data swells that occurred all thru that week . As you can see from this slide here , they are taking the aggregate data and using it to AI-write whole dissertations on DihTech technologies without ever actually using the word DihTech .

"By September 20 we see them trying to access the DihTech staff roster , they tried to encrypt that attempt and we picked it up anyway .

"Then on September 22 here, just after midnight, we see them trying to recreate the tech trees necessary to pirate Kh Industries technologies .

"Aaall that," she emphasized with a circular hand motion, "occurred in about a one-week span . So that·s where we·re at right now ."

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"So this , friends ," Skaði gestures to a large reactor-like device built into the wall·s foundations , "is a little bit of something we·ve been working on at Kh Industries ."

Upon approaching the reactor interface , she sees that there is actually a person built directly into the wall . A nude person , covered in electrodes taped neatly to her skin , hoses going into and out of her sides , pumping fluids into and out of her .

"Every time we charge one of these instruments ," she casually intones , "the grid changes . Some of them , like HcoDuLo , we keep on hand for offensive battery ðð[and] others , like HcoSiNa , we keep in continuous glow ."

"Now you see this monitor over here? Ka ." Skaði grips the corner of a flat screen on a crane arm and pulls it closer to the corrugated steel observation deck they were all standing on . "This baby shows a map of all the psychics in detectable range ."

The map , with the word KATOLIKA across the top of it , was a heat map of the observable universe . There were blue patches everywhere .

"That·s a lot ," one of the delegates opines , staring at the star map covered in translucent blue circles of varying sizes .

"That is a lot ," Skaði agrees , nodding . "That star map maps to this future grid here ."

With a pinch of her hand , the display set to dual-screen . On the other side of the screen was a map of blue and red areas .

"This future grid is a map of all the outcomes of all the schemes and plans of all t actors ðð nations ðð systems k within a several-hundred million light-year diameter . The red ones here are timelines that are deleterious to life , the blue ones are ones that are caregiving of life . Now our objective , here at Kh Industries , is to turn as much of that as possible to purple . Watch ."

Skaði embraced the cyborg woman built into the reactor . She touched her sex with the familiarity of somebody intimate . Plunging two fingers into the woman , the woman archs her back . White light erupts from the reactor core .

"Now , this thing...!" Skaði shouts over the þrimming reactor , "is designed to take a lot of contact ."

Skaði grips the woman·s sex hard , causing her to cry out . The reactor hums louder . She jackhammers the cyborg·s wet sex , gripping the spongey mass of tissue to the front of her vaginal canal . The cyborg screams ecstatically , straining on the restraints . The colors on the screen begin flickering, turning, interacting, trading signals . Nodes would turn purple , causing whole timelines to vanish and re-map . A list on the side of the screen shows the number of technological advancements that would be created and when in time all the necessary ingredients could be coaxed together .

Turning her back briefly to the observation team , Skaði embraces the cyborg completely , kissing the side of her bald head and neck , making her shiver with want and anticipation . Three hundred years from now , a coral farmer in the oceans of Enceladus would meet their world·s leader and flare into a tryst which would make or break the aquatic queendom .

She kissed her , wetly with lips and tongue . The point graphs mapped the wave of ecstasy across a hundred worlds . Many of them reverted to red , or to ruddy infrared . Some of them stayed blue , or purple .

"Now! Here ." She said , letting go of the gorgon and stepping down from the reactor platform . "Meet the pilots ."

The delegation walked down the hangar floor , passing several large two-person vehicles , one seat above and the other in front . A group of humanoids in plug suits were just putting on their flight helmets .

"Hey Serena!" Skaði shouted . "Come ·ere!"

A grey-haired woman with hair buns and long pigtails saunts over , wearing a dark green flight suit .

"Ohayo gozaimas·!" she says perkily in Japanese . "What can i get you Ka?"

"Serena , the first time you saw one of these machines , what was the first thought that crossed your mind Ka?"

The woman smiles , a grin that widens with recollection . "I wanna be a pilot!"

Skaði claps her on the shoulder . "On target ."

"Proceeding to target ," she agrees bountifully , before trotting over to her unit and flight partner .

The pilots line up against the wall . Together , they intone ,

"Obey and Learn . Pay attention . Make no mistakes . Now, follow ."

Skaði grins , then gestures down another hallway .

"Come meet the crew ."

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Further inside the massive facility , which was designed to accommodate life forms two or four times larger than the ones who built it , there was a lounge area with broad tall windows . Outside , clouds tumbled over a stormy sky , lit in steel-grey light .

The gravity really is something else . Why in Virgo would you ever put a permanent base on a planet of this size? .

"So! I·m SaFa , Serena back there is Krasi ." The delegation walked past two youths , one of them in a cobalt-colored still-suit with extra arms genetically engineered at their elbows, another a scrappy-looking girl with oily black hair holding a large wrench . "These are HaSe ðð Tarkova . They·re our resident finder-keepers , these two are our best and brightest ."

Tarkova smirks and laughs .

Walking across the spacious lounge floor , the group meet two more youths . "KoHa, KoSe ."

The boy , with brilliant eyes lit by magic , turns to the left , while the girl , with pop-color anime hair , turns to the right . They·re both wearing skin-tight plug suits .

"Ara ara ," the boy says .

"Nice to meet·cha ," the girl says .

"Over there in that glass tank ," Skaði continues , "is DuNa . She·s a psychic slime mold that can literally fold time . Yes , she·s sentient and self-aware ."

The group passes a short woman with wavy red hair . She·s dressed in an elegant black dress with a wide-brimmed gardener·s hat . "This is KoLo , she·s our resident operator in charge of Project Strix ."

"And this ," she announces , "is BaDh ." The cold-mannered, black-haired reploid turns to them , a small tattoo on her face the only indication of her mechanical origin .

The delegation murmurs amidst themselves , talking about all the things they had seen .

"And this , my friends ," Skaði announces , "is also the end of the tour . You·re free to mix and mingle here as you see fit . Accomodations are just down the hall there , the machines will direct you to your respective suites . Welcome to DihTech ."

The squirrel girl turns to the reploid in black , embracing her . BaDh kisses SaFa back mechanically , without hesitation nor remorse , as if used to her body being an open system . Skaði plunges a hand below BaDh·s skirt , sampling her taste and licking her fingers . BaDh embraces her back with the practiced skill of a professional courtesan .

Skaði looks back at the aching delegation , sagging in their anti-grav rings or leaning against pillars . "Well? Go on , git!"

Music in the exotic language plays from the loudspeakers ,

Haleluiiaa Aahtde . HcoLat Duaa Kana . HcoSaNa Sehase .

Nothing in the Dream Factory is working the way it is supposed to .

People are running amok , having sex behind the employee sections , playing massive games of Hide and Seek in the smashed-together amalgamations of gleaming super-malls and irradiated wreckage .

Plants are growing tentacles and flower blossoms that sprout legs and turn into spiders . Mudslides from rapid Ice melts have reshaped entire forests , which have whole communities growing in them . A meteorite crater was filled with glowing orange lights .

Dreamers , once separated by long winding passages , have been escaping the ruins of the Mirror Labyrinth in droves , forming groups, tribes, entire villages . Cruise ships have been grounded and turned into co-ops . Latrines have been filled in or replaced with other appliances .

It isn·t chaos down there , because our people know what to do . Whistle-holding supervisors distribute goods and information . Whole villages emerge as the dreamers escape by the thousands .

I slept thru Scintillé tonight . Woke at 23h30 , went back to bed at 0000h , woke up an hour and a half later , looked at my watch , dove back in and made another trip . I could have stayed up and watched videos on the internet , yet something told me to sleep instead .

So i rested , and this is what i found .

In what i could only view as the most possibly dark tragic comedy , this morning i dreamt that the auto-bot for ÞjaziOS f-i-n-a-l-l-y gathered enough data to render up a solid, lifelike Character Render for me , Skaði .

In the world from my perspective , my ex-husband is dead and his kayak in roiling overhaul , trying to make right something that can never be made right , like in MtG Hidden Planeswalker Variant vol. 09, pge. 18, frm. 04 , where Ral Zarek goes thru stacks and stacks and stacks of iterations , trying to figure out how to get out of the way between Fa and Fa·s Sa without erasing himself or his son from existence .

From my perspective , Lemuria was reduced to utter ruins and then some , smashed flat and pounded into rubble night after night , until the DreamWorks had been smashed into marble rubble, and then the Dream Factory driven by an escalating two-front war with no escape into the stone age, and then trapping millions of dreamers from America·s EMCSA writers to China·s design team for Fanren Xiu Xian Chuan in lab rat cages in order to get a pure sample of my waking behavior, and the Nightmare World that was forced into existence just on the outside of the cheap Laboratory walls in order to facilitate its own existence .

From my perspective , this tragedy and its causes all stemmed from cowardly acts , all stemmed from reasonable, rational Real Men acting in what they consider good faith and strong policy . From my perspective , even though the final product is a lifelike render , something that i did not ask for , and was by the existence of so many anime with The Four of Us in it already perfectly capable of seeding on my own , the route that we took to get here destroyed the Land of Dreams for millions of people and laid the [Classified] to utter waste .

And it is only upon looking back , at finally stopping and actually looking at what had been done to get here , that it is so blatantly and plainly apparent why their little rational renderer that could was trapped between flagposts , something which caused it to behave in an absolutely most non-rational way .

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