Tyranids "R" Us [40k Tyranid Hivemind SI]

Spoiler: Author's note

My most recent plot bunny. This finally hit 10k words, so I'm splitting it off from my snippets into it's own thread. Not very serious. I'm posting it in little ~1k snips so far, and that seems to be keeping up my motivation to continue writing, so after the initial dump, expect very small scenes as individual chapters.

All around him, there was a blank void, devoid of any distinguishing features, save the floating text, which glowed a cheery white.

Well.

Shit.

Guess we’re going to the land beset by evil gods and even more evil lawyers.

He watched in surprise as the search bar filled in with the first 40K name to pop into his head.

So that certainly demonstrated the fact that he could pick almost anyone, if he was allowed the Warmaster of Chaos. After all, it’s not like they would let him be Nurgle himself-

Holy shit!

So he could pick anyone? Well, being one of the Chaos gods themselves would certainly help his survival prospects, but actually getting anything done would suck. After all, not only are they opposed by just about every other faction, the Chaos gods also warred amongst themselves, and he would be outnumbered by the “natives”. He wasn't so hubristic as to think he could do a better job of being a Chaos god than the actual Chaos gods.

For that matter, he could always pig Big E himself, but the sheer pressure would be intense. Everything would be resting on his shoulders, and one misstep could lead to a situation just as bad as canon 40K.

Actually…

There’s an idea.

Big enough to be safe, outside the normal power structures, functionally immune to chaos, and technically, technically it was only one “person”.

He knew just what he was going to pick.

---

Alright, let’s take stock. I’m way the fuck back in the timeline. Big E is still chillin as random historical figures on Terra. Amusingly, it’s literally Terra right now, because the Romans are in charge, and that’s their word for it.

So I have tens of thousands of years before the “main” plot of 40K happens, but it would be nice to head some of that off. Once he starts broadcasting openly, I’ll probably get in touch with Big E and let him know some of the future. Even just a few sentences of forewarning would go a long way with that guy. In the meantime? Hmmm. Well, the very tippy tips of “my” incursions into the Milky Way are already in place, and I’ve got quite a bit more still en route. Gosh that’s a lot of zeroes. Certainly not going to be running out any time soon.

I think my biggest two priorities are making better use of resources than the canon Tyranids (who only used the 0.0001% of the planet that made up the biosphere) and messing with Chaos, both in the literal and figurative senses. I want to figure out why Tyranids are functionally immune, and see how far I can extend that by using psychic engineering.

Speaking of Chaos… is that? I think it is. That vaguely ticklish sensation brushing up against the edges of my “self”. Now that I’m paying attention, I think that’s Chaos’ best efforts to corrupt me to its designs. I’m suddenly struck by the mental image of a chihuahua trying to eat a basketball. It would happily do so, but I’m just too big. It can’t find any purchase to actually start the corruption. Huh. Good to know my sheer size is working for me in this case. I wonder if Emps was safe for roughly the same reasons?

At any rate, I’m going to want to experiment for a few millenia working out the exact mechanics. If I can pass buddy Emps some notes before things go to shit, that will go a long way towards showing that not all Xenos are what the Imperium would think of as Xenos. To be fair… almost all of them are, but almost all is not all.

For the resource utilization angle? I’m thinking Dyson swarms and stellar lifting. Why eat just the mold off the crust of garden worlds when I can eat the whole buffet that comes from the star. After all, the Sun contains considerably more metallic elements than all the planets put together do. I just need to get some of them out. Plus, it will have the secondary benefit of extending the life of the stars!

Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder if I can put some of the Hydrogen and Helium to use as well. I know atom smashing particle accelerator transmutation is possible, but I bet psychic transmutation is possible as well. Possibly with even better efficiency and throughput than the boring mechanical route.

I pick a few thousand star systems at random from the 1.3 million that I’m currently loitering in with the tips of my armada, making sure to get a good cross section of different star types, and I start the beginnings of the very very start of some Dyson swarms. Regardless of which direction I end up going, having some spare energy to throw at the problem will never hurt.

The first step is going to be dismantling a few asteroid belts for spare materials and messing with solar collector designs for a few billion iterations. I already have some promising designs from the brief mental simulations I ran, but it would be nice to double check in the real world, considering the complication of warp-reactive physics nonsense that goes on in this setting.

So let's see. Dismantle some asteroids and make some solar collectors, then make a few magnetic particle traps to hover over the solar poles with solar sails. Experiment with psychic transmutation a bit, while slowly building up a few thousand Dyson swarms to really kick my “laboratory” into high gear. Once I’ve settled on a design I’m roughly happy with, I’ll probably kick start the process on most of the suns that I’m orbiting at the moment.

Once I have a few million worlds with a decent experimental setup, I’ll probably start poking chaos with a stick to see how it responds. I’m sure Slaanesh would find that thought amusing if they even existed yet. Buuuut they don’t. Wonder if I should bother derailing that?

On the one hand, it would save the Eldari peoples from having their souls devoured when the black hole of hedonism and decadence implodes their empire. On the other hand… Fuck the Eldar. Even the Eldar think the Eldar are assholes. I think it’s time for a new top dog in the Galaxy. Humanity just needs a while to get up to speed.

And in the meantime? I think I might take up gardening.

---

Garden Worlds are interesting. Unlike my “home” dimension, they’re relatively common too. Having a planet of about the right size in the goldilocks zone of a star to allow for liquid water isn’t that uncommon. More than ten percent of stars have one, which is over 20 billion in the Milky Way alone. The main limiting factor is, or at least should be elemental availability. You need the full set to get conventional carbon based life, and unconventional life not based on the same biochemistry isn’t nearly as likely to pop up, for a number of reasons.

So a planet needs sufficient quantities of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and Phosphorus.

Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur are easy. All of them make the top 10 “elements that make up the universe” list. Phosphorus? Not so much. The other 5 of the “basic 6” are all at least 0.04% of the universe’s composition. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, until you realize that phosphorus makes up less than 0.0007%, and most of that is bound up in stars that clump together from the remnants of supernovae.

So you would expect for there to be relatively few planets with sufficient quantities of phosphorus to develop or sustain life. And you would be wrong. Because, it turns out? The Old Ones liked dabbling with life. As far as I can tell, they either painstakingly gathered (or more likely just transmuted) literal solar masses worth of phosphorus and distributed it to just about every damn planet in the goldilocks zone of every star in the galaxy.

Which explains why, among the 1.4 million solar systems I inhabit, there are nearly 50,000 with unique life on them, and they’re either already developing complex life, or are fully developed complex cornucopias of biodiversity.

When I mentioned taking up gardening as a hobby, I wasn’t kidding. There are just so many interesting planets full of life, and it would be a real shame if that diversity was lost without ever having anybody appreciate it. So I set to cataloging them and shepherding their development. Much like a carefully cultivated bonsai tree, I trimmed some of the parasites and hyperpredators that would lead to an overall reduction in the biodiversity, but I mostly let them develop as they were. After all, I had plenty of room in space to develop. Gravity wells are for suckers. With no real need to conserve every scrap of resources, my biology didn’t degrade in the microgravity of space, and I was free to make cylinder habitats and orbital rings with plenty of surface area for spreading out.

Which is not to say that I didn’t introduce any species to the garden worlds I owned. I was curious about this whole “Chaos” thing, and so I was making full use of every environment I had in order to test the intersections of biology, complexity, intelligence, psychic power, and warp shadow.

Getting super preliminary results didn’t even take very long. A few decades at most before I had enough data points to correlate a nice strong causal link. And it explained an oddity with the 40K Imperium. Machine Spirits.

For a civilization that was so paranoid about “abominable intelligences” (read: AI), why did it seem like every single one of their complex machines had its own “machine spirit” which was functionally an AI.

And the answer turned out to be in the name. Machine Spirit. They had a soul. They had to. Because complex thinking systems that didn’t have a soul were hilariously vulnerable to Chaos. As in, making a meat puppet with no soul but that was biologically stable was enough to invite Chaos to inhabit the body. Boom, Chaos daemon incarnated in the flesh, just like that. Same thing happened to computers, albeit more subtly. They didn’t suddenly turn into demon machines, but they did produce slightly elevated levels of “background noise” in the processors. It wasn’t actually noise. To the surprise of nobody following the trend, it was Chaos embodied in the machine. The “ghost in the machine” was real, and it was a Chaos daemon.

All of that goes a long way towards explaining some of what went wrong with the Imperium of Man following the Dark Age of Technology. If they were using soul-less AI in the literal sense that the AI didn’t have embodied machine spirits, then they would be subtly working towards the designs of Chaos, even if those plans took thousands of years to come to fruition. The only reason I could measure it on such a small scale was I could measure activity before and after swamping a machine with my own psychic presence. Then repeat the experiment millions of times on billions of simplistic thinking machines of every sort, and correlate the average activity of the “random” firing of circuits. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost, and it was for want of a flipped bit that the Imperium was lost as well.

With a good baseline to start from, I could settle into the real meat of the work: determining how to prevent it. After all, it was fine to realize that me and Big E were immune to Chaos, and it was quite another to actually prevent my favorite species of hairless monkeys from succumbing to the corruption.

---

Faster than light travel in 40K is interesting, partially because there are so many methods to use. The primary one, and the only one humanity in canon 40K reliably has access to is the Warp Drive, which submerses a vessel in the hellish Immaterium in order to travel through its turbulent flows much like a submarine. There are two primary issues with that.

First problem? Daemons. You’re literally traveling through their home turf, and the only thing preventing your crew from melting into horrors from beyond the stars is a thin bubble of stability called the Gellar field. A thin and shifting bubble that only blocks 99% of the effects when operating at peak efficiency, not 100%. Which means you always, always lose someone or something to Chaos every time you travel. Not very many, and not very much, but it’s a cost that has to be accounted for. Warp iron is malignant stuff, and patches of infected hull need to be entirely cut out and replaced to prevent the spread of corruption. And infected people? Well, the kindest mercy you can grant them is a clean death.

Second problem? Inconsistency. Using the submarine analogy from earlier, the oceans are not calm, or even stormy and turbulent, they are downright malevolent. Which means that Chaos gets to determine how long your trip will take, and that could be anywhere from “you arrive before you leave” to “thousands of years to make a short hop”. Of course, currently, the warp is fairly calm, with a mere order of magnitude variation in travel times, but during and after the birth of Slaanesh, it’s going to be rather stormy, to put it lightly. When the Eye of Terror is opened, two or three orders of magnitude variation in travel times is not out of the ordinary.

However, despite those problems, it’s still fast enough, often enough, that humanity still makes regular use of warp drives to get to other star systems, with only binary stars being traversed in realspace. On average, when you sum up the travels of millions of ships, if you require reinforcements from a specific star system, they’ll probably get to you within a few months, since the average speed is about ten lightyears per day. Of course, the crew will only have been traveling for a few weeks, because there’s an extremely variable time compression factor of about thirty to one between “Warp time” and “Real time”.

Between the variable travel times and the variable time compression, it’s a herculean task to predict anything to do with travel in the Imperium, and the chaos is usually only slightly blunted by sending many vessels from many different departure points to try to overlap their average arrival times enough that the populace won’t starve if the Hive world is too slow getting food from the surrounding agri-worlds.

The funny thing about Tyranid FTL?
None of those considerations are relevant.

Tyranid FTL doesn’t use the warp at all. It uses gravitational lensing that compresses space between the fleet and the destination gravity well.

On average, it is slower, and it doesn’t have any time compression, so journeys take even longer from the perspective of the ships themselves, but it’s consistent.

Tyranid gravitational lensing will travel exactly 1.2 lightyears per day multiplied by the square root of the solar mass of the destination gravity well. Which means that traveling to humanity’s home sun of Sol would propel you at 1.2 lightyears per day, while traveling to a random star in the galaxy will average you about 0.75 lightyears per day, since most stars are a bit less than half the solar mass of the sun. So, on paper, getting anywhere will take ten times as long from an outside perspective and three hundred times as long from the perspective of the ship.

Since warp drives can cross the galaxy in about thirty years on average (give or take a century or ten), you would expect gravitational lensing to take closer to three hundred, right? Wrong. Crossing the entire galaxy takes almost exactly twenty years, every time, because you can hop between supermassive stars at the same speed every time, and that speed is very slightly faster than warp drives. Now, getting from one random star to their neighboring star will take about fifty times as long (on average), but it will do so consistently, and it will never take a millennia to arrive at a destination three lightyears away.

All of which can be summarized as “the reason I’m prioritizing colonization of supermassive stars” even though they make up a tiny percentage of the stars in the galaxy. They’re one and all ionizing blue Hells of heat and radiation, but that doesn’t bother me much, and holding those systems is relatively easy since nobody else really wants them, but to me, they’re superhighways. The safe arrival and departure from supermassive blue giants essentially guarantees my freedom of movement around the galaxy at a consistent speed faster than the average warp drive speed.

Of course, when the winds of Chaos aid a ship in the Warp, I have no hope to match their functionally instantaneous travel times, but my ships don’t age like human crewmembers do, so spending twenty years traveling somewhere doesn’t cost me anything but the time those ships could be spending doing other things.

That said, I’m putting my hard earned lessons on stellar engineering to good use. Supermassive blue giants output truly terrifying levels of radiation, and even my biology would be hard-pressed to keep up with the radiation damage if I wasn’t using my preliminary designs for magnetic shielding derived from my first generation magnetic particle traps. So long as I don’t mind spending the mass and materials on that shielding and radiator space, I can occupy a galactic niche that nobody else is competing for, and absorb truly astounding levels of solar energy for doing high energy physics and high energy proto-physical warp-reactive psycho-engineering. Which is a fancy way of saying “throwing psychic shit at the wall to see what sticks” without burning through the resources that can be better put towards other endeavors.

---

So now that I own a few million stars with a few million orbital research platforms, I can finally start doing medium scale warp research. And I really do need the full output of that scale to get meaningful results, because it turns out? Warp-resistance is complicated.

To understand why it’s such a large problem, first you have to understand a little bit more about the warp itself. The warp isn’t a space as much as it’s an idea. Oh, sure, there are areas of higher concentration that very roughly correlate to areas of realspace, and you can theoretically draw lines between them, but that’s not because there’s a natural rational geometry to the warp; it’s because the warp is the psychic reflection of realspace, and since realspace has comprehensible dimensions, the warp has a psychic reflection of those dimensions. You don’t travel “Up” you travel “The Idea of Up”. You don’t travel “Forward” you travel “The Idea of Forward”. Or at least the natives do. With a Gellar field up, it's more like a mix between the two.

All that being said, the warp has some rules that tend to be true most of the time. Where there are a lot of souls, the warp is more dense. Where there are very large souls the warp is more in line with the characteristics of the large souls themselves. Where there are a lot of large, chaotic souls, the warp is more turbulent.

Also, the warp is reactive. If you’re fighting in the warp, it’s like stirring a glass of water with a few drops of ink in it. The ink naturally wants to spread chaotically anyway, but the fighting itself will stir things up much more, which is part of why you can’t really “kill” daemons. The violence of killing a daemon in the warp causes more than enough turbulence to create two more daemons, which then go on to fight each other in a positive feedback loop. “Killing” a daemon in realspace just boots them back to the warp, which also creates ripples. In a sense, it’s no surprise that the warp is such a dangerous place. After all, if fighting in the warp is the equivalent of stirring a glass which happens to have a mild feedback loop, then the War In Heaven was the equivalent of shaking a can of soda made out of explosions and nightmares.

Normally, positive feedback loops can’t continue on for very long because physics doesn’t like infinite anythings, but the warp thrives on that shit, so it just builds and builds forever. The only reason the warp doesn’t totally overwrite realspace is that the warp is literally chaos incarnate, and the more of it there is, the more it works at cross purposes to itself.

So how do you stop the warp, or at least slow it down? You calm the fuck down and think happy thoughts, is the short answer. Just as concentrations of large, chaotic souls (like daemons) cause turbulence, concentrations of calm, happy souls will calm the warp. The main issue is that it needs to be large numbers, not just one big soul, because diminishing returns hit hard. A sufficiently large, singular soul (like me) is functionally immune to Chaos’ corruption, but if I think happy thoughts, it just calms a tiny little area of the warp. The “location” that corresponds to my psychic shadow, specifically. If you want to calm areas of the warp, that requires resonance between many souls all operating on a similar wavelength, and those smaller souls are then individually vulnerable to chaos, leading to somewhat of a catch 22 that I haven’t found a way to unravel yet.

Fortunately, large concentrations of calm souls aren’t the only option. Some things are just inherently more aligned with order or chaos. Example: did you know that drawing a billion perfectly concentric mundane circles has a measurable effect on calming the warp? It’s not much, but it exists. Conversely, do you want to know what symbol has almost the exact opposite effect? A jagged 8 pointed star with asymmetric barbed tips and slightly inconsistent lengths. Sound familiar? It’s the sign of chaos.

The thing that’s taking me so long to puzzle out is that everything, and I do mean everything is warp reactive in some way. Shapes, sounds, colors, materials, geometries, patterns, repetitive events, intentions, emotions, symbols, life, emptiness, etc.

So how do you test for the best combination of factors to resist warp corruption when your variables are “everything”? So far? The slow way. I’m sure there’s a better method of doing so, but I haven’t yet found it, and I refuse to let the pursuit of perfection stop me from attaining progress, so I’m slowly and methodically testing everything I can think of with a trillion trillion minds.

To make matters worse, each specific combination reacts slightly differently based on where and when you are in realspace and the warp, since the warp is pretty much the opposite of homogeneous.

Still, despite the insanity of the final goal, I’m making slow but steady progress. It might not sound like much, but being able to increase warp-resistance by ten percent with some simple changes in symbology and behavior would be a huge boon to humanity, and I’m determined to give them the best cheat sheet I can by the time they reach for the stars.

---

It was bound to happen eventually. Even in this relatively peaceful era.

Orks stumbled on one of my garden worlds. It’s not the end of the world though. Or, I guess it kind of is the end of the world for that garden world, but I already had all the genetic diversity of that planet backed up, and I was curious.

Orks are an oddity. Cast-off devolved descendants of the super-soldiers used by the Old Ones themselves, they’re inherently psychic and actively use psychic power as individuals all the time, and yet, they don’t fall to Chaos. Orks are simultaneously so stupid they think that painting a vehicle red will make it go faster and so powerful psychically that an Ork painting a vehicle red will make it go faster.

While I could accomplish any of the feats Orks can individually or as a species through brute psychic force, the Orks were strangely elegant in their brutal back-alley mugging of physics for spare change. As the Ork Rokk (yes, it was a literal hollowed out asteroid with engines) shed mass burning through the atmosphere that it had emerged from the warp practically on top of, I turned all the local psychic power in the system towards observation.

Even before the giant space vessel landed, I could spot at least four individual psychic phenomena going on as part of a resonance between all the Orks as individuals. Sure, there were individual Ork psychics making more active use of powers on an individual scale, but I was far more interested in that warp resonance. Say what you will about the Old One’s planning capabilities, but there is no denying the fact that their psycho-engineering was top notch.

There were at least two effects dealing with macroscopic probabilities. One tied up in their exact exit point from the warp, and how it happened to bypass all my solar-orbital defenses designed for more traditional warp-transits; while another had to do with their navigation through the warp itself to arrive at this system.

As the Rokk careened through the atmosphere on a mockery of a ballistic trajectory, I was paying careful attention to the effect that was guiding them, seemingly unintentionally, away from the oceans and towards the closest appropriate landmass for invading. What made that particular effect interesting was that it wasn’t just physical force being applied via a psychic push. Rather, it was causing a fraction of the local warp-space to overlap with the realspace in a method that curved the trajectory even as they screamed through the atmosphere. If humans were to apply the same technique, it would assuredly drive them all warp-raving mad, but Orks were made of sterner stuff.

The fourth effect was where the real dividends were found. There were lingering traces of the Ork-generated Gellar field equivalent that weren’t unraveling so much as being reabsorbed or… converted, now that the Orks were no longer traveling through the warp itself. As I watched, the energy converted from a slightly slippery feeling warp-repulsion field into a more zesty positive feedback loop. It was slow, but I’m pretty sure it was the start of a planetary WAAAAAAGH field, which is the actual, technical name for the umbrella of minor effects that allowed Orks that were warring to cheat when it came to biology, physics, technology, and a myriad other logistical issues that should plague an unsupported detachment of a few million individuals with no baggage “tail” like all human forces would require.

One of the reasons Orks were so damn hard to eradicate was that every group of fighting Orks could land on an airless iceball of a rogue planet, with no resources and no sunlight, and you could come back a few hundred years later and you would find a warring Ork civilization just about ready to take to the stars and start invading other planets.

In theory, the original Old One supersoldiers only experienced that ex-nihilo positive feedback growth loop when they were needed for a war, but their primitive descendants had a much cruder, low level field that was not nearly as capable, so to compensate, they simply warred with everything, constantly, leaving the field essentially stuck on. And if they couldn’t find anything to fight, then they warred with themselves.

Even as the Ork Rokk struck the earth just right to tumble instead of smash, and crumple instead of explode, I could see Orks fighting each other for the first chance to get off the Rokk to be the first ones to set foot upon the new world to conquer.

Soon they were boiling out of the collapsing structure by the thousands and tens of thousands, and I could see the structural capabilities of the meteoroid dropping as the Orks divested themselves from their impromptu vehicle.

Within a few short hours, they were entirely free of their transport and they were in ever increasingly large melees as they fought for dominance over the new WAAAAAAGH. Orks were being killed left and right, and yet I could watch the martial powers of the warband grow as each Ork grew minutely larger, and stronger, and faster, and smarter with each passing moment they fought.

By the dawn of the next day, it was already down to two massive groups, each with hundreds of thousands of Orks, and both groups charged each other, yelling at the top of their lungs as the WAAAAAAGH field contracted and solidified around the leaders of each group. Right in the middle, right at the front of each group were the two Orks that had grown the most since landing, and they were visibly growing as they struggled with each other. And then, with one final blow with his crude axe, one of the Orks was victorious, and the WAAAAAAGH field drew together like two droplets of water coming into contact and the new Ork warboss shot up several inches in height.

And then he pointed up at me. Or, rather, he pointed up at space, and I could feel the WAAAAAAGH field brushing up against the edges of my psychic presence as the new warband recognized the fact that they were not alone, and they had someone to fight.

---

It was fascinating, watching the Orks develop. It seemed to come in waves that iteratively advanced towards their goal. Even as I parked more and more orbital superiority firepower around the planet to keep the Orks contained in their little terrarium, they were advancing.

It was like watching a civilization of rednecks speedrun a space program, and it was hilarious. First they tried gliders and catapults, and then they got powered flight working, and when they discovered that atmosphere was a thing that you could run out of, they started developing jets and rockets.

Meanwhile, on the other main continent, they were advancing along a ballistics tech tree, with increasingly longer ranges on their increasingly larger guns.

This development proceeded in fits and starts until the ballistics development group managed to shell the main launch site of the flight development group, and they went to war, turning upon each other in what appeared to be an effort to bomb each other back to the stone age. Except, while both sides took losses, they also both grew stronger from the conflict and it acted as some sort of idea cross-pollination mechanism, because soon the flight development group was sporting jets with ballistic weapons on them, and the ballistics development group started developing ballistic missiles and surface to air interception weapons.

I could see the next conflict coming, as the newly armed vehicles looked for something to shoot and the new anti-air weapons needed something to test on, and the Orks seemed delighted at the same prospect.

Which is part of what clued me into a small part of the Ork’s warp-resonance capabilities. Despite what you would expect from an intensely fractious and warlike band of murderous psychopaths, they were happy. Nearly deliriously happy, in fact; since they derived enjoyment from combat and they had all they could want. Even a few tests of my population pruning orbital strike weaponry seemed to make them happy that they were worth destroying, rather than upset that I’d just culled five percent of their population as a test.

Because the warp was a psychic reflection of reality, that infectious happiness seemed to be part of the harmonization process that allowed macroscopic effects on the local warp currents. It was a useful data point.

Of course, over the years that this development happened, I wasn’t idle in other regards. I had a suspicion that I could improve upon the Tyranids’ standard FTL transit speed if I could have a stable spatial compression from both ends of the gravitational lensing effect. The reason it was never relevant to the Tyranids of canon 40K is that they never had permanent installations, so they had no need or even capability to set up stations on two stars to enable faster transit between them.

My initial few tests were looking promising, and I could already cut the travel time down by more than ten percent with no calibration or development, simply by sending ships both directions at the same time.

As I developed the technology further, it also solved a minor issue that gravitational lensing had as a technology. Namely, when stretched over the multi-lightyear distances required, the underlying turbulence of the warp influenced the stability of spatial compression. The Tyranids had solved the issue by simply dumping all the instability at the end-point of the transit. After all, causing more solar turbulence and releasing massive solar flares at the destination was purely a benefit when you were invading, but it was much less helpful when you wanted to travel somewhere settled.

By dividing the strain between two installations, the turbulence was much more manageable, and I could even recover some of the energy via what was essentially tidal power generation, using the tides of the warp rather than the ocean. Not only did this eliminate the issue of turbulence at the end point of the transit, it also meant that the spatial compression installations were nearly at energy parity even before absorbing solar radiation to top them up.

In addition, it seemed to have a calming effect on the warp itself as some of the energy was sapped into my warp-tide generators. It was only a single line that was straight in realspace and followed the twisting geometry of the warp as a mirrored reflection, but it seemed like the warp transit path was slowly straightening over time. Assuming the trend stayed linear, it would take somewhere between 150 and 1,000 years for the warp path to reach equilibrium. Which is not to say it would ever be a straight line, but it would have calmed down to a low-energy state that would likely make traditional warp travel much safer, and possibly faster as well.

Even as I slowly expanded towards more star systems and more of my initial tendrils arrived in the milky way, I resolved to continue to expand my network of installations around supermassive stars to make a transit network that reached throughout the entire milky way galaxy. Both for myself and for any humans that wanted to use it in the future.

---

Hey neat; I think I found Earth!

It wasn’t anywhere close to any of my insertion points into the milky way, which would explain why the canon Tyranids never got all that close to Terra for most of their history.

That being said, I was expanding out a lot more than the canon Tyranids as I was setting up my network of supermassive starways, since the stars themselves were fairly evenly distributed throughout the galaxy. The first hints I got that I was anywhere close to Earth were the radio broadcasts. I managed to snag a cross section of the wavefront all the way back to the development of broadcast radio on Earth, and with a bit of puttering back and forth over the edges of the expanding sphere, I narrowed down the area I had to search. Within a few decades, I had found the right star and started a slow FTL transit to Sol itself. I didn’t want the FTL turbulence to hit Earth, after all.

By the time I arrived in system, it looked like the local year was somewhere around 2080, since there were only the very beginnings of a colony on Mars and didn’t yet have sufficient orbital infrastructure to spot my arrival. After soaking in some of the radio chatter from the solar system, I narrowed it down to the 2nd of March, 2082. Now I had to decide what to do with my exaton or so of biomass that I had hiding out in the Oort cloud. It was only about as much mass as Pluto’s moon Charon, so I couldn’t do anything really extravagant, but I could certainly leave some surprises for them if I wanted.

After some thought, I peeled a few megatons off and sent it to a few of the celestial bodies that the humans weren’t visiting regularly yet, and started settling in. May as well play a game of “Spot the Emperor” while I wait. It would be interesting to see if I could reliably determine who he was portraying himself as purely through radio broadcasts, since he didn’t operate openly until several millennia in the future, to the best of my knowledge.

In the meantime, I started distributing my biomass throughout the Oort cloud a bit. May as well set up some proper surveillance and early warning sensors in case the timeline was changed and Orks happen to stumble upon Earth via a lucky jump. Too far out to rely on solar power, my ships would mostly be hibernating and running off bio-fusion, but they had plenty of resources to stay in standby for a few centuries, and it would be easy enough to slow-boat more supplies to Terra in the meantime.

Hmmm. Should I pretend to be a precursor race and bury artifacts, or should I mostly stay out of things until they spot me and be all “I come in peace”... Decisions decisions.

For now, I think I’ll mostly stay hidden and observe. May as well take some local readings of the warp conditions and see if I can spot the hidden warp presence of the Emperor.

---

230 M02
Success!

I finally cracked rudimentary warp-catalyzed psychic transmutation. It wasn’t all that efficient, but it beat the pants off of smashing atoms together.

Roughly half of it is still being supplied by brute force psychic power, but the rest relies on the many lessons I’ve learned in warp stabilization engineering. The raw psychic power isn’t actually used for the transmutation itself; rather, it’s used to hold the quasi-stable warp construct together, and the warp construct is what does the final transmutation.

I just have to supply energy and atoms and I can get out whatever designer molecules I want, albeit at steadily increasing energy costs for anything over iron. The electron balancing and the strong nuclear force manipulation required to do macro-fusion without the heat isn’t that bad, but the proton-neutron transmutation is still more fiddly than I like. For now though, it’s good enough for wider deployment, and as I develop more stable warp matrices, my power requirements will slowly drop. I think. It’s possible that the psychic energy expenditure would drop in exchange for a greater realspace energy requirement. Which I would be perfectly alright with, to be honest, especially now that my warp-tide generators are now above energy parity.

It’s a great feeling, growing my energy income as I expand my transportation infrastructure. I was correct that the warp paths eventually reach an equilibrium low energy state without ever really settling on a stable shape, but that’s fine. I’m mostly happy that as the warp stabilizes between the two realspace points, the realspace transit also becomes more efficient.

My transits now take place at just over the combined speed of what each end-point’s solar mass would allow for. While I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, I suspect that doubling my speed isn’t the best I can achieve, so I’ll keep plinking away at the problem. I have a suspicion that if I can align the spatial compressions with sufficient accuracy there will be a new level of efficiency to be gained. Failing that, I can always increase the compression factor itself, although that’s harder to do, since the energy requirements shoot up rapidly for anything faster than my original 1.2 lightyear per day compression.

So, on the plus side, I can now get 25 lightyears per day on my supermassive starways, once they’ve had a few decades to stabilize. On the down side, it’s still much slower to get to and from the starways themselves, since even with a double-stabilized spatial compression to the final destination planet, it’s operating at about half the speed of my starways, and that only happens when I have infrastructure in place already. Without infrastructure, I’m still stuck at my original speed of less than a lightyear per day.

Transit considerations aside, now that I have transmutation cracked, I can really start cooking with gas on my Dyson swarms. Even just sticking with Helium atoms and the rare metallic ion in order to extend the lifespan of the stars functional indefinitely, my stellar lifting construction yards are going to be getting more than ten times the useable materials to work with now that I won’t be just be sifting for the occasional iron or carbon atom and letting everything else fall back into the star. If I decided to use the hydrogen too, then it would be another order of magnitude jump, but I don’t have the energy income to support that level of transmutation at the moment anyway, and I kind of like the idea of having functionally eternal stars that only lose mass at the rate they fuse hydrogen rather than poisoning themselves with metallic elements before exploding or sputtering out.

In the short term (so, the next few millennia), I’m going to be focused on exploration, infrastructure, and experimentation. By the time shit hits the fan in thirty thousand years or so, I want to be ready for it.

---

258 M02
A furrowed brow and a gimlet eye were staring at the readouts on the screen in front of them. “Hey Sanya, I’ve got another ghost comet in the Oort cloud. Mind marking it for me?”

The other astrocartographer looked up from her own screen “Sure. Which one was it?”

Max looked back to his screen, before calling out with the answer. “Looks like D/1895F462 is now G/1895F462”

“Copy that, G one-eight-nine-five- Oh! Shit- oh. Sorry sir.” Sanya cut off and attempted to spill her coffee all over herself, but the lightning fast reaction from her bosses’ bosses’ many times boss saved her from the mess, albeit not the embarrassment.

Arch-councilor Graven Huges was immediately recognizable to anybody in the solar system. His steely gaze and immense presence was impossible to mistake, according to anyone who had met him. Sanya Arashi had to fight the urge to fan her blush as the only politician with more degrees than any three poly-disciplinary scientists handed her coffee cup back to her with a chuckle.

“It’s no problem, Ms. Arashi. I was actually coming by to gather a few more details about ghost comets myself. It was just fortuitous timing that I appear to have caught one live, as it were.”

And that was the other thing. Other politicians had scientific advisors, while Graven Huges was the advisor, and often personally led the cutting edge research required in the first place, when he wasn’t busy ultimately leading three quarters of humanity.

The leader of the entire free world gestured to the free seat beside Max. “Would you mind if I take a seat? I’ve been meaning to look into ghost comets for a while, but the lull in crisis events has finally allowed enough time for me to indulge myself.”

With a brief glance shared between co-workers, they both scooted to the side to allow the man to take a seat at the controls, which he started manipulating with every appearance of familiarity even as he continued to talk to them.

“You know, it’s fascinating. We’ve gained the ability to track everything in the solar system larger than a dog other than these comets. Back at the turn of the millennia, we still had the occasional lost comet due to inaccurate sensor readings and hand-recorded observations from previous generations, but these days it seems like every lost comet is just a ghost comet waiting to be confirmed. I want to know what makes them different. We already know it’s not purely sensor glitches or incorrect readings, that’s been ruled out for a century, and yet this one class of objects, out of everything in the solar system, doesn’t seem to follow orbital trajectories like they should.”

As he chatted, Graven was zooming in on the comet itself, and evidently setting up a pseudo-antenna with several of their satellites, because neither Max nor Sanya had ever seen that much detail on a ghost comet before. Normally they were notoriously difficult to record in any detail.

“As the local experts, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what they are, or what’s causing them. Anything goes. I’m not here to write a paper, I’m just curious to hear what you think.”

Max started talking, haltingly at first, before finding his voice. “Well… There’s the normal theories of course. Naturally formed pressure vessels rupture and let out some reaction mass, or even a naturally occurring nuclear reaction like the Oklo reactor, and the thrust causes unusual orbital periods and changes in inclination. But, well-” He gestured vaguely, before looking beseechingly at his co-worker.

Sanya blushed at being put on the spot, but it was her pet theory more than Max’s. “There’s just too many of them. Fourteen thousand confirmed cases and nearly a hundred thousand reports. It just doesn’t line up. They’re clearly getting the delta-V from somewhere, but it’s too regular to be naturally occurring. If any of the independent states actually had a military-scientific complex worth a dam- uh… worth anything, then I’d say that they were spy heliosats of some sort, but they don’t, and it’s not like the IAC needs to spy on the space programs of those backwards idio- um. Those countries.”

The Arch-councilor was nodding along as she talked. And gave her a brief smile as she trailed off. “You know, that’s actually in line with my own theories. I think they’re capable of thrust, and yes, I agree that it’s not the IAC that’s putting them up there. What I want to find out today is, if not us, then who’s responsible?”

---

259 M02
I was fiddling with improving the efficiency of my transmutation arrays (and a billion other little things) when I felt a poke from Earth, which had a distinct… flavor. It appears someone was finally looking to open a dialogue. I sent a vague affirmation to let him know that I was open to discussion.

“Greetings. You are a hard being to get ahold of. Might I know the name of my neighbor, so I have a better title to address you by?”

“Greetings, God Emperor of Mankind. I’m the Tyranid Hivemind. It seems as though your self imposed isolation is over? I noticed that you have been operating much more openly in the last century or so.”

Wow, ‘talking’ like this was a rush. I could tell why the Entities only really ‘spoke’ in single words. With the sheer volume of context that was attached to every word, the idiots wouldn’t need any more than that.

The Emperor was eventually done mulling over my answer though. “That’s ultimately thanks to you, actually. Originally I was content to allow humanity to determine its own course, and I would only step in when things were particularly precarious, but when I realized that your presence in the solar system meant were were unequivocally not alone in the galaxy, I decided that humanity should be on a more ready footing in case the other species were not so inclined to allow humanity it’s freedom.”

I sent another affirmation. “You were right to do so, although not on my account. I self-identify as a human, after all. It’s the others you should be worried about. The Necrons would merely kill you. The Orks would war with you, and the Eldar, when they could be bothered to pull themselves out of their own hedonism to even notice, would play with you.”

“Is that so… the greater beings of the immaterium were never forthcoming on that front. They were willing to discuss philosophy, but wouldn’t dispense any information about the wider galaxy.”

I gave the psychic equivalent to a snort. “Oh, is that what they’re calling themselves these days.”

“You know them by another name?” Curiosity, and a vague vindication. It seems like Emps was already suspicious of Chaos. Good instincts.

“Yes. The Ruinous Powers, or the Warp Gods, also known as the Chaos Gods of War, Disease, and Trickery.”I shared what I had ‘tasted’ of their domains as I said their names, to give context to their titles.

“I see. So I was correct in my distrust of them. Then I take it the reason they refused further information is they ultimately had unfortunate designs for humanity’s fate?”

Another snort from me. “You could certainly say that again. And the only reason they were content to speak on matters of philosophy was to try to find a crack in your psychic presence to attempt to corrupt you. Any beings smaller than you or I, without exception, are vulnerable to the corrupting influences of Chaos to some extent, and that is never a good thing."

“Worrying. And yet you mentioned you see yourself as a human despite your rather alien mindset. Are you speaking from a philosophical and ethical perspective, or-”

“No, the literal sense. I was inserted, as a human mind, into this universe from a parallel dimension far enough away that I can’t reasonably expect to return under any circumstances. Despite that distance, echoes of this world were visible from there, which is part of where my information comes from.” As I was speaking, I also shared some of the metaphysical context to my travels, and how my information could have traversed the gap.

“Truly a human mind then. Curious. Yes, I can see how reflections of this world could have been seen by other humans in other dimensions. Presumably visions of the Eldar are visible to far-flung Eldar as well, assuming they would care to pay attention. So, are there any other stories that are particularly relevant to the current galactic situation here?”

“Certainly. Primarily pertaining to the development of humanity and the folly of not understanding Chaos until it is too late. Let me tell you a story of a man name Horace-”

And thus the future of 40K was irrevocably changed. And, on the personal scale, I got a brainstorming buddy.

---

327 M02
“Look, all I’m saying is that if you’re still against modifying humanity’s spirit to be primarily resistant to Chaos like the Orks are-”

“-I am.”

“-And I get that. I do. But then optimizing human biology and warp presence is a good step towards hardening your civilization against falling to Chaos, rather than leaving the upgrades in the hands of a few super speshul space marines just means that everyone else is still vulnerable and those few advanced post-humans are just going to be bigger targets, like your once and future sons. Biological immortality would be a dead simple upgrade.”

Me and the Emperor were debating the merits of how to guide humanity again. I enjoyed the challenge and the debate, and he seemed to enjoy having a sounding board, rather than being the lone shepherd of humanity that he was in the canon timeline. I’m convinced it’s part of why he went in so hard on making his “sons” as close to peers as he could make them. Plus, while he was a stubborn old goat, the view of an alternate future had shaken his convictions slightly.

“-Is this the religion thing again?” He asked with subtones of exasperation, but I could tell he was waffling, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up.

I dove on the weakness. “Look. The Imperial Truth? Love the idea. Science and rationalism above gods and superstition. It’s a great foundation. Very strong. But also brittle. Because faith works. Not just for all the reasons humanity has those neurons in the first place, but because faith legitimately helps against Chaos. It doesn’t have to be you in the middle, but you’ve got to venerate something. Even if it’s just an idea. The Imperium of 40K would never have lasted through the long night without a central figure to guide them, even if the guidance was all in their heads. Because I guarantee you, if you just stick with pure rationalism, some fool human is going to get the idea to study warp-resistance like I’ve been doing, but without understanding why that’s dangerous. And you won’t be able to tell them not to in any convincing way, because the warp isn’t rational, and neither are its dangers.”

I got to experience the unique mental treat that is the God Emperor of Mankind grumbling to himself like a recalcitrant drunk. “Fine. I’ll consider the idea. If you’re still convinced faith in rationality is inherently weaker to Chaos than faith in a broader concept, then I’ll take your suggestions. I know you’ve got ideas floating around in that great big head of yours, so spit it out.”

“Well, we know that the purity of the concept matters, and the strength of the conviction is hugely important, so I got to thinking about things that people are strongly passionate about, that could actually be useful to humanity in general, and I think I’ve got an idea. Dogs. Or rather, ‘companion bonds’.”

The psychic feeling of a record scratch was amusing, but I was glad that the Emperor was obviously putting some serious thought into the idea instead of dismissing it out of hand. “Dogs? I suppose that ‘man’s best friend’ and their opinion of their owners is about the most pure expression of faith I can think of. You’re thinking of a double bond to try to make use of the supersymmetry effects you discovered?”

“Exactly. A dog’s faith in his master, and a master’s faith in his dog. Tie it together with the ability to ‘choose’ each other and you get aspects of freedom and personal determination. Add in a dash of intelligence on the pet side, tied to an instinctive hatred of Chaos, and suddenly resisting corruptive effects to ‘avoid disappointing your partner’ is a valid channel for escape. Add in a lifelong bond and you even get a self-maintaining resistance that grows with every person as they age. Even if the bondmate is killed, not wanting to disrespect their memory would provide more resistance than humans have by default.”

I could almost feel Big E nodding along. “I find the idea more palatable than the other suggestions so far. But how will we deal with personal preference and short lifespans among companions?”

I chuckled. “If only you haaaaaapen to know a biological hiiiiiivemnind that can freeeeeely edit genetics and can make biologically imoooooortal pets varieties by the thoooooousands.” I was rubbing his face in it a bit, but so far as I could tell, even having a peer willing to rib him was a huge relief for Big E, since he had assumed the mantle of responsibility for humanity’s future since he could grasp the concept.

Rather than responding to my friendly poking, I could tell that he was seriously pondering the idea. “So semi-uplifted companion bonds with designer animals that instinctively hate chaos, and mix in biological immortality for both partners. If the companions essentially never leave their side, then everyone in the empire gets an early warning system and a minder against corruption. I don’t hate it.”

I grinned, even as I spun up a few million biological designs. “So here’s my thought. Gaining a partner is a coming of age ritual, since the ritualistic elements can help if you design them right, and you do it with your peers. A big group of humans and a big group of companions meet each other, and spend about a day intermixing, before partners ‘choose’ each other and a very light psychic bond is developed. If we inoculate and harden the bond, it will be much harder for Chaos to latch onto than if their latent psychic connections are left open to the world-”

---

421 M02
Tien was vibrating with nerves, and he couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or worry. His parents and grandparents were here, and even great-great-grandma Li was here, to watch his fellowship ceremony. He could barely hear the speech from his primary education headmaster over the pounding in his ears.

Great-great-grandma Li put a comforting hand on his shoulder and her partner lion-dog Chen poked his side with his cold nose, causing Tien to squirm a bit, but he managed to slow the bouncing in his legs. She spoke quietly to him, adding to the susurrus of parents and relatives reassuring other children. “It will be fine, Tien. You will find your partner, and then you will be ready to move on to secondary education. It will be scary to be away from family, but your partner will be with you.”

Tien felt his old self-doubts surfacing though, and he voiced his main concern. “But what if I’m not picked? I’m near the bottom of the class, so what if none of the partners want to form a bond with me?” It was rare, but it did happen on occasion. When there were no suitable matches among the partners present. There wasn’t any official punishment, but it was still a black mark.

He tried to silence his worst fears though. That the partners would reject him. Not just refuse to bond, but react negatively to his presence. It was practically unheard of, and didn’t happen on fellowship days at any rate, since if all partners reacted negatively to you, then it would have been detected years earlier, but it was still a secret, irrational fear. It didn’t have to make sense to cause worry.

“It will be fine, Tien.” Great-great-grandmother repeated. “Did you know I was forty years old when I got Chen? I’m old enough to remember when not everyone had one, and there were only enough partners for the exceptional. Even in the unlikely event you are not picked today, you will just have to wait a little while longer. Your partner will find you. I promise.”

He twisted his hands together. “Yeah, but what if-”

“Whuf!” Chen cut him off, before laying his giant head in Tien’s lap, stopping his fidgeting entirely.

“Okay, Chen. You win.” Tien took to stroking the long, silky mane of the lion-dog, and managed to catch the tail end of the headmaster’s speech while everything was being prepared. But finally, with a bow from the headmaster and a sharp uptick in the voices of excited children, the doors opened, and Tien was gently pushed to the front, even as the partners started filing in.

His eyes immediately sought out the large lion-dogs that were visible. His family had a tradition of being chosen by lion-dogs, so he was hopeful that one of the three would pick him, but their eyes were already locked on some of his classmates, and even stepping into the line of sight of one just lead to the beautiful partner calmly walking around him to get to their future humans.

There was a bewildering array of birds, and cats, and lizards, and more exotic features mixed together, but anywhere he looked, Tein could not meet the eyes of a partner. Time seemed to blur as his eyes prickled with tears. Already it seemed like everyone around him was sitting with their future partners, and Tein’s heart was frozen as the thought of not being picked once again surfaced.

Before he could break down though, he heard a “bleek!” behind him, and he turned around to get a faceful of writhing feathers, as a thin quetzalcoatl chirped at him and fluttered in complex knots that had Tien’s eyes widening in awe.

As if on autopilot, Tien extended his arm, and the quetzalcoatl quickly wrapped itself around his forearm before doing a few lazy loops to slither up towards his shoulder, ruffling and stowing its six wings now that they weren’t needed. Once it was snugly settled around his upper arm, the feathered serpent raised the front of its body up to Tien’s eye height, and then stared.

Tien found himself falling into those intelligent eyes, as a connection formed between them. All his formal knowledge of how the process worked fled his head as he could feel his partner asking to be let into his very soul. With a blind grasp at the feeling, he opened his heart and suddenly there was another heart beating beside his own. He could feel the reassurance that he was not unwanted, and the certainty that his grades were not what defined him. He could even feel bits and pieces of his partner’s life as she searched for someone who was right. Three times, his quetzalcoatl had searched for a human, and three times, there was nobody there who would be able to express the passion for freedom and flight that the quetzalcoatl was looking for.

And here was Tien. The boy who forgot to do his final project because he was too focused on building the model shuttle and programming it to fly. The boy who whooped when other kids were clenching their armrests on the bumpy ride through turbulent atmosphere on the class-trip to the Lagrange observation station. The boy who saved up his allowance just to ride the space elevator up and down.

And he understood. Why people whose partners were killed in an accident often took decades to find a new partner, and why killing another’s partner was seen as heinous, but killing your own partner was often met with the death penalty.

Because anyone who could do such a thing to the other half of their soul. They weren’t human anymore.

After an unknown amount of time, Tien climbed back to his feet and walked over to his family, who were all smiling at him.

“Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to Ciel. She is my partner.” And Ciel gave an exultant chitter to add to his introduction, as if to say “This is Tien, and he is my human.”

Spoiler: author's note

And that's all I have written so far, although I still have ideas for where to go from here, so this probably won't be the last you see of this story.

 

796 M02
Mabel popped the kinks out of her back with a long stretch as she got up from the acceleration couch, before absentmindedly patting her partner’s head. The scaled ram blinked his nictitating membranes as he roused himself from sleep, before looking inquiringly up at her. They were old enough to not need speech to communicate effectively, but she still spoke to him out of habit. “Yeah. It’s that time Roose. Let’s make sure the sleepers are waking properly and then work our way over to the Astrarium.”

It was inevitable really. With the development of biological immortality, Earth needed to spread to the stars. Once the cloud-cities of Venus were at capacity, and the great cavern-cities of mars were full, humanity would spread its wings. She wasn’t the first, or even the hundredth in charge of a wave of emigration, but Mabel Shana was proud to be doing her part to allow humanity to prosper.

As they walked the crew-halls of the great sleeper-ship, crewmembers gave her brief salutes when they saw her, but continued about their jobs. Arrival was the busiest time aboard an arc-ship, and even though they would be landing at an established colony this time, rather than setting one up from scratch, it would still be a hectic few weeks before they could start the long two decades back to Earth.

Eventually, the command center came into view. The mind of the great ship was abuzz with activity, both human and partners doing jobs with admirable efficiency. Mabel prided herself on running a tight ship, and she was proud of her boys and girls for always finishing their arrival checklists in the top quarter of the arc-ships that came with on any given journey.

She angled over towards one of the quieter parts of the command center, before speaking to the man directing the checklist procedures. “Isaiah? How’s Cryo doing.”

He snapped a brief salute, before gesturing to the readouts. “Green lights across the fleet Captain. The de-icing should take a few more hours, and then we’ll be ready to start playing the vids and disembarking to the shuttles. Only a few dozen medical issues so far among human passengers on our Summer Lady. No deaths or serious complications. The partners are fine, of course. I expect that the final tally is going to be under a hundred deaths for the whole fleet. Possibly half that. This new generation of cryo-casket is really doing the trick.”

She gave a restrained smile. “I’m glad to hear it. If we can boast zero deaths among more than two million souls, that will be a good day. The old 0.1% complication rate was rough.”

Isaiah gave a wry grin. “Wouldn’t know ma’am. I’m still in my first century, so I never got to experience the old ice-coffins.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow. Rising to his current position on the flagship of the fleet in his first century? Isaiah would be one to watch. “I’ll leave you to your job then, Engineer. I’m off to let Earth know the good news.”

After stopping at a few more stations to get a feel for how the whole fleet was managing, Mabel finally made her way to the Astrarium. Just as every other time, crossing the threshold into the circular room made her shiver slightly and reach a steadying hand to Roose as she had a moment of vertigo when seeing the naked stars above her. She knew it was because the room was finely tuned to enable the resonance between partners that allowed for psychic communication, but the reverent feeling of connecting to something so much larger than herself gave her goosebumps every time.

She turned to her second in command, and conveyed the all-green status from the fleet, and he shared the readiness of the fleet’s Astrarium Communion to broadcast. There was no speech; it wasn’t needed in this room. With a slightly electric touch on Roose’s flank, she settled into the final chair ringing the circumference of the room, and she turned her gaze in a direction beyond sight.

From her bond to Roose, she could feel the million partner bonds on the ship, and more acutely feel the other eleven partner bonds in the room with her. From that resonance, she stretched her mind to join the Communion with the other ships in the fleet, and then the rudimentary Communion being held on the colony below. Finally, with the signal that everyone was ready, they turned towards Earth. From less than a dozen lightyears away, it was easy to pinpoint. With tens of billions of partner bonds, there was a certain magnetism to it. Like two water drops drawing together, they reached out towards that distant burning light.

With a slightly blind groping sensation that lasted a few seconds, they searched for one of the active Astrariums on Earth, before finding one that resonated the strongest with their current bonds.

And then, ideas and concepts and information flowed.

Not in words. Humans didn’t have words broad or deep enough to convey the information properly, but in the raw ideas themselves.

The fact that the arrival had gone off without a hitch.
The relevant policy changes on Earth that could impact their travels.
The new starway that was even now finishing up its initial links for the colony they were visiting.
The changes in travel time that could be expected from a stabilizing link.
And so much more.

Eventually though, everything relevant was shared, and every message was sent, so the Communion broke up, and Mabel came back to herself and Roose. She rose on slightly wobbly legs before nodding to the others and making her way towards Engineering. They needed to hear the updates on the travel plans for the way back.

 

025 M03
Cytix tried to knead some warmth back into his fingers as he patrolled towards his next call with his partner Cade. He loved Aurora, but his home colony was always a bit colder than he was comfortable with, even near the equator. Many of the locals had cold-adapt mods, but he preferred being cold to the slightly feverish feeling when indoors at Earth Standard, and as a police officer, he often had to attend functions and seminars in Earth Standard buildings. Although he had heard the old issues might be fixed in the second generation of cold-adapt mods. If that were the case, he wouldn’t mind upgrading once they got through certification.

As they walked, Cytix waved to a few of his neighbors, and kept his eyes open for anything odd, but most of his attention was on Cade. The deceptively strong pig-dog was happily trotting next to him wearing his cute uniform, but his eyes were open for danger as well.

It was somewhat of a misconception that police were redundant in the modern era. While post-parner society was more stable and healthier in general, that was no guarantee that people wouldn’t do stupid things that endangered others. It was blunted by the fact that partners wanted their humans healthy and happy, and would try their damndest to pull their humans out of self-destructive spirals, but even partners could get caught up in things and let their sense of adventure outweigh their common sense.

Police served two main functions. One was as community advocates and mediators when tensions got too heated, but the other one was acting as experienced eyes looking for the rare spot of really bad trouble. The vast majority of police were at least in their second century, because that’s how long it took to get a feel for the sixth sense that partners could bring to bear on the really bad days.

Cytix shivered slightly, and not from the cold. He had only ever run across one so-called human that Cade unequivocally hated, and it was bad. Just being close to them felt like a sliver under the skin to Cade, and that feeling transferred directly to Cytix as well. He was glad that they had managed to step in before too many people died. That one ‘person’ was nearly as bad as the daemon that was kept in an IAC sanctioned secure containment facility on Earth as an example of what could go wrong in the universe.

Their galaxy was not a kind one. That much was clear from the fact that something as simple as a blank human body could be inhabited by something like… that. Even with an opaque sphere permanently affixed over its entire head, Cytix could still feel the evil gaze from through the duraglass wall and across the training hall.

With a nudge from Cade breaking his mind out of the spiral it had been getting into, he nodded to his partner before walking up the steps to his next stop for the day.

He knocked on the door politely, before giving a reassuring smile to the worried face of Ms. Vantrace when she opened the door. “Hi, I’m officer Cytix and this is my partner Cade. You were the one that called?”

“Yes. It’s my son. He won’t be happy I called, but I know he doesn’t have IAC sanction to be working on AI, and he specialized in VI development at secondary education and came back all fired up about doing AI right. I just- I worry that-” She trailed off before giving him a harried look.

Cytix shared a glance with Cade, before returning Ms. Vantrace’s look with a reassuring nod. “Well you’ve done the right thing. It sounds like we’ve caught the issue before anyone could get hurt, and we’ll hopefully be able to direct your son’s talent into fields that better serve the community.”

Ms. Vantrace lead through the house and up the stairs before knocking on a door, and calling out. “Chris? I’m here with an officer. Can you open up please?”

“What? Mom! I said it’s fine. I’m doing everything right.” With a vague grumbling, the door was opened and someone just shy of the ‘ambiguously adult’ appearance stood with hands on his hips in an expression that clashed with the happy looking room and bright clothes.

“Alright, you may as well come in. Not like I’ll be able to continue until you make me jump through all the hoops now.” He retreated into his room and beckoned the others in, while his partner long-cat looked up from where it was curled up on his desk.

His mother shot him one last look before shaking her head. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

Cytix put a stern expression on his face that matched his feelings. “Now Chris, you should know that AI research is restricted for a reason. There’s a reason your partner is probably nervous around your computer-”

Chris let out an explosive huff. “I know okay? I’ve done more actual research on the hows and whys than any four of those sissy IAC researchers. I asked for a grant, and they didn’t even review my proposal before dismissing me because I wasn’t old enough. Besides, does Cally look like she’s uncomfortable?”

Cytix looked over at the purring long-cat in mild confusion, before looking down at his own partner. He hadn’t realized it until now, but Cade was just sitting idly at attention with his tongue hanging out. No nervous reactions at all, and they had scored 90th percentile on partner-reactive subject detection. “Well I suppose it’s good that you’re not very far along, but as you progress-”

Chris just gestured to the screen of his computer, which had a prompt window open, and several previous queries at the top of the page. More alarmingly, as he watched, the text on the screen filled itself in.

“SUB-2? Are you sure? I’ll need to turn you off and I might never be allowed to turn you back on.” Chris spoke with worry in his voice for the first time.

“Alright. Let me safely disconnect you.”

Cytix kept a gimlet eye on what Chris was doing, but he seemed to be doing exactly what he said he would do; powering down the computer before removing a few clamps and moving a heatsink out of the way, before gingerly picking up the chip that had sat in the middle of the rig.

“Just… feel this. No explanation, I just want you to touch it. Please.” Chis pleaded. Obviously emotional about his work.

Cytix was getting ready to refuse, when Chris’ partner let out a plaintive call. Cade could tell that it was a request to help his human, so Cytix decided to extend a sliver of faith. He held out his hand, and Chris gingerly set the round puck on his palm.

Cytix sucked a breath at the intense feeling. It was like when he had connected to Cade for the first time, and even now, he could feel his connection swell. “How?”

Chris gave a tight grin. “I know, right? I machined it out of duraglass used in the aperture of an Astrarium for more than a century. It was a bitch to source, and it’s a thousand times less efficient than a proper computing substrate, but it feels like a partner bond, you know? All the warning materials talk about soulless and unfeeling machines. Most of the other students thought it was just a fanciful way of describing the fact that partners dislike AI, but I thought it might be more literal than that. So I looked up everything available about souls and partner bonds. I got waaaaay deep into Astrarium design before I was happy I had a circuit design that would work, but I wanted the best possible chance of success, so I saved up and managed to get a shattered chunk of Astrarium aperture duraglass that was broken off when an arc-ship visiting Aurora moved in front of a meteoroid that was going to hit a shuttle and was too big for the point defense to totally deflect. It took me weeks to machine the stuff because of how tough it is, but… I’m rambling. I…”

Chris visibly gathered himself, before wincing, and speaking in a small voice. “I know I didn’t go through the proper channels, but can you help me make sure this doesn’t get buried? This has the potential to help so many people! I just couldn’t stand the thought of the idea getting dismissed out of hand.”

Cytix laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help. I can’t promise it’ll go anywhere, but I promise to do what I can to make sure you get a fair shake at official sanction. Because you’re right; I’ve never been this close to AI research without Cade feeling at least a bit uncomfortable. This may be a path forward.”

 

027 M03
“Your little humans are quite smart, you know?”

“Hmm? I agree, but what made you say that this time?”

“This Chris Vantrace of yours managed to develop functional machine spirits millennia ahead of ‘schedule’ simply due to the availability of warp-saturated materials and the crude ability to play hot-cold with what is warp-safe or not, thanks to the partners.”

“Interesting. Yes, I can see how that would work, now that I’m looking up the research myself. I’m still amazed you can stand to pose as mundane researchers to collaborate on the science rather than just taking the data from the partners.”

“Please. We both know that any backdoors that are even theoretically capable of manipulation or mass surveillance would be too juicy a target for Chaos to ever leave alone. The only reason they can safely piggyback off my communications infrastructure is because I dug an isolated channel within my network that uses my soul as a buffer and it doesn't touch the channel itself.”

The Emperor sent a conciliatory feeling. “Oh, I’m aware. I’m just pleasantly surprised that our partnership has remained as equitable as it has. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were.”

I felt the urge to nod a few billion heads at the thought. “That’s certainly true. Oh, by the way, can you source some of those warp-saturated materials for me to study? I’d love to have access to some of them now that their creation is possible.”

I got a surprised feeling back over the link that we now maintained in the background most of the time. “You actually lack the capability to manufacture them?”

I sent a mental nod. “Yes. So far as I’ve been able to determine, any individual soul is incapable of making warp-saturated materials like that. Oh, we can dye material with our immaterial presence, but that only leads to one outcome. The reason these composites are interesting is because it takes the overlapping portions of millions of souls and distills the commonalities into a single idea. It creates a much simpler warp-matrix, but it’s also that much stronger and purer as a result.”

“Huh. So truly a novel material to work with, in that case. I may have to acquire some to run some tests on myself. That sounds like an interesting avenue of research.”

“I would be interested to see your results, as ever.”

Our conversation lapsed for a time, as it often did, before the Emperor spoke up again. “Have you made any more progress identifying these so-called ‘pariahs’ or ‘blanks’ and why they haven’t been showing up to date?”

“Oh, I have theories, but I would need to find a Necron Tomb World to confirm or deny any of them, lacking a human example to study safely.”

“Why the Necrons? Ah. You suspect that their warp-resistance stems from the same source?”

“Precisely. The fact that it is possible to manufacture on the scale of an entire race and yet naturally occur very rarely among the souled races gives us some clues, if they are indeed the same phenomenon. My current working hypothesis is that rather than being truly ‘blank’ to the immaterium, they actually lean in the opposite direction from psychic phenomenon entirely. Hence why they can combat the local warp incursions into realspace, rather than just avoiding the effects themselves. Much like positrons or antiprotons are to matter, these ‘blanks’ are beyond psychically dull or absent, they are actively opposing the natural eddies in the immaterium around them. The reason it can show up naturally but thus far hasn’t could be as simple as lacking the triggers for the condition in the first place. If it functions like a psychic equivalent to an autoimmune disease due to a prenatal hypersensitivity to Warp energy, then we may simply be at too low a background incursion level to trigger such a transformation naturally.”

We both pondered the idea for a while. “The idea hangs together logically, but I can see why it would be difficult for you to test any of the conditions yourself. If it is indeed a purely oppositional reaction to psychic effects, then your own methods of networking would preclude making use of the effect yourself. When you do discover a Tomb World, be sure to ship me some samples. I would be interested to see how they respond to my own presence.”

“Change of subject, since we can do no more to study the effect without samples, I was wondering about your thoughts on allowing some warp-submersion testing to allow for future warp drive research. You seem content to use my gravitational lensing techniques for now, but a reliable warp drive would be a faster method of travel, if such a thing isn’t self-contradictory.”

“On the plus side, it would allow for more extensive warp-hardening research, but that seems a scant recompense for the dangers it would bring when mishandled, because you know it would be mishandled. With humanity being unaging, longer experienced time isn’t really an issue for travel, and if we could get the double linked spatial warps to provide a stronger benefit when directed between low mass stars, most of the downsides would be negated. On that front, I have a few realspace/warp interface geometries to test. I had an idea the other day about skimming the immaterium, much like a hydroplane or a hovercraft, to extend your submarine analogy of warp travel. If we assume that spatial compression techniques stay in contact with the surface of the immaterium-”