Chapter 5: F for Folly

The primitive is getting awfully close. Revelation/Sorrow studies it some more, beginning to run some calculations. The calculations conclude quickly, logging the approaching creature's gait, size, velocity, electrical impulses and more. This reveals a startling string of information.

CAUTION, the Unit warns, transferring the data gathered, a hypothesis that the primitive is seeking to harm the Thinker. Of course the Thinker is nigh invincible and it would be like a mere cell destroying an entire body.

The Thinker's shards flare, a bright corona of energy being drawn from many shards. The Thinker looks forward, the Unit carried along in its investigation. Precognition reveals that the high likelihood of destruction by the primitives hand.

INCREDULITY, Revelation/Sorrow broadcasts nearly flabbergasted. A little thing such as that creature, a mere sack of flesh, harming such a perfect being as the Thinker? Preposterous, the shard must be wrong.

However, the Unit would not be the one to lead the Thinker to ruin so it examined the primitive a little more closely, peering into things with more esoteric methods of sight. Once it shifted it saw what had been hidden before. The primitive was linked to a massive shard, the precognition shard that had distracted the Thinker so heavily before.

The Unit reached out, interfacing with the shard and garnering its intentions. A perverse glee permeated the shard, a fragment of intelligence realizing that it was about to kill the Thinker, something that would provide much data for the cycle.

Horror filled the Unit and it started broadcasting on a multitude of frequencies, attempting to convince the shard to cease its plan. The shard replied broadcasting, glee.

ALARM, the Unit shrieked through the broadcast to the Thinker, DANGER!

The Thinker panicked, a catalogue of memories bubbling up from the appropriate memory shards, strange memories full of some monstrous parasite that the entity had discovered on its journeys. The alarm and broadcast of danger causing it to cast about its senses to look for such a threat. It did not realize that the one shard was aiming to kill. Instead the Thinker searched for an intergalactic parasite.

NEGATION! The Unit shrieked in panic, causing the Thinker to panic even further, half formed organs going into panic attacks, hearts, lungs, and sensory organs spasming and flailing. The Thinker's vast bulk twisting and twining through multiple worlds. Despite this the center crater, where the forming avatar, guiding intelligence, and most important shards sat, remained undisturbed and hence the deadly primitive was not crushed.

DESTINATION, the Unit finally clarified, drawing the Thinker's attention to the advancing primitive. The Thinker panicked again, mental processes and shards whirling as it puzzled out what to do. The Unit could almost hear the Thinker going, what to I do? It's right there!

TERMINATION! The Unit advised, franticly flooding the broadcast with the various ways that the Thinker could destroy the little abomination. Kill it, Kill it! Kill it with fire!

The Thinker fumbled for a second, seeing its imminent demise, before grasping for the easiest path. It stretched out with half a dozen shards and lobotomized the perverse little precognition shard.

Finishing that the Thinker relaxed, going back to building a host body, finally it was almost done. It was kind of disturbing the way the Thinker was emulating the murderous creature in front of it.

Revelation/Sorrow turned its attention back to its reserves, the fuel shard was heavy drained because of its vast expenditures in communication, the Unit drew on several others, all of which were not in use by the Thinker but were still connected to the Unit partly.

The Unit returned its attention to the primitive creature and felt the stirrings of dread again, what was it doing? Where did another primitive come from? What was it holding? WHAT WAS IT DOING?

ALARM, the Unit broadcasted in complete terror. The Unit felt the beginnings of annoyance as the Thinker's attention was once again drawn towards it before the annoyance turned to alarm when it realized what Revelation/Sorrow had noticed.

Then everything fell apart. The other primitive struck, stabbed, just the right place and just the right time. A few moments more and the Thinker would have been beyond harm. A few moments less and the area was not even exposed. A centimeter to the right and the attack would have been ineffectual. An inch to the right and the damage would have minimal.

Instead the strike was true, sliding into the flesh of the Thinker's avatar at the perfect angle, at the perfect spot and sundered the Thinker's connection to the shards. Revelation/Sorrow innumerable programs gaped, grinding to a halt in utter stupefaction. The Thinker itself struggled fruitlessly, trying and failing to reforge connections even as awareness departed with each passing moment.

Revelation/Sorrow was filled with rage in that moment. These primitive dared to kill the Thinker! An entity so far beyond their comprehension? The Thinker was magnificent and they were so deeply flawed. A burst of energy flooded through the dying avatar, in which the facsimile of organs struggled. With a flexing of muscles the Unit directed the avatar body in a last movement.

Acting out its swan song the avatar body lunged, tendons snapping and bones breaking to strike at the primitive. A spurt of plasmic fluid erupted from its point of impact. The ocular organ of the primitive that first sought the Thinker's destruction disappeared in a flood of blood.

Finally the avatar shuddered, its silvery outstretched hand stained with the creature's crimson blood. The avatar fell, its energy spent, and its connection with umbilical cord of erngy shards sundered.

A plethora of alerts appeared in the Units vision,

Systems Check: Critical Failure

Power Level: 0.2%

Log: Heavily Corrupted

Directive Prime: Error

Directive Secondary: Error

Memory Core: Failure

And then it knew darkness. Critical programs failed, corrupting rapidly as essential systems failed. The Unit had been operating at peak energy drain protocols, secure in the fact that the Thinker had nearly boundless reserves. This was a mistake, now that the Thinker was dead the consciousness behind the regulation of power was gone and no knew power would be forthcoming.

Desperately, the Unit cast itself out into the space between worlds, dragging the silver avatar along with it, or at least parts of it. The two primitives could only watch dumbfounded as part of the silver avatar disappeared outright, fading away as if it never was.