The Lanotee glides around the planet, spindly tentacles folded back, horned head a silhouette burning bright against the backdrop of a defeated Sun as it plunges into a violet, violent atmosphere.

The probe follows.

Starlight to base, projects the Captain. The chip planted in his cranium wills his ship to chase the Lanotee into the raging storm of resistance. Disruptor located. Coordinates …

Earth. Home world of the People.

A thousand voices, the Ancestors, scream into his cybernetic skull.

FaYlYeR …

     2 bReENg …

               ThA

     dIsRuPtOr

          To JuStIsS …

               wIl … HaV … CoNsEkWeNcIsS!

The Captain’s bio-engineered brain nearly bursts, and his saginium skeletal system convulses in electrified agony. As the pilot of the Starlight flails back and forth in the cockpit of his ship, desperate for liberation, he focuses his superior verbal reasoning ability like a laser at his forebears.

Of course! he projects into his internal dialogger. Justice shall prevail! The People have spoken!

The seizure, and voices, cease. The Captain takes a deep breath, not out of necessity, but like so much of his programming, as an act of nostalgia. In this case, replicating a technique the People once used to calm their fleshy nerves during the first generations of space flight. Although the People are extinct, their collective voice remains, unsolicited advice permanently hardwired into his DNA.

Old habitz dy hard, he thinks, quoting the Ancients in the old tongue.

As the Starlight enters the lower atmosphere, there is no sign of the Sun, and glass rains upon the wasted planet. The tenacious downpour of shattering sieves pommels the ship. The probe’s neo-fuse engine illuminates the intrepid sky, and the ship’s force field activates, burning off the debris. The Captain watches with wonder as sharp, glittery fragments melt across the cockpit display. Life, he realizes, is a kaleidoscope of ever shifting arrays of beauty and tragedy.

The Lanotee, that primitive terraformer, visible in the distance, leaves a trail of rocket exhaust and an atomic bomb in its wake. The Starlight takes evasive action, force field absorbing the brunt of the blast as the shockwave rips through the air.

The Captain watches the tentacled menace invert beyond a mountain range and spiral down out of sight.

DeStRoY

     ThA

          DiSrUpToR!

bellows the Ancestors, always quick to respond to the neurological stimuli triggered by the Captain’s external environment. The cybernoid’s right hand jingles, resisting their voices. As his body joins the rebellion, the Captain starts to tremble. He grabs his right hand with his left, stabilizing the traumatized appendage, and himself, from any further physical outbursts.

He takes a deep breath and reiterates his mantra since he left Pluto.

Yes, my loves! he projects into his internal dialogger. Fear not! Justice will be served!

The trembling subsides.

*     *     *
The Lanotee’s reverse engines fire, and the cephalopod touches down gracefully with its eight legs on a bed of rock. The horned head lowers to the ground, and the legs fold around the head, the Captain notices, as if protecting the machine from the planet’s stormy noise.

Perhaps the Lanotee is cursed by the commands of its Ancestors, too.

The Starlight circles above the Lanotee like a timeless bird of prey as the pilot considers his next move. The once defunct terraformer, resting in the ship’s sights below, had been abandoned for eternity at a tech grave on Mars. Somehow, the machine managed to resurrect itself, assess its own status, repair its own damage, and repatriate an arsenal of tectonic explosives from a sprawling pile of deceased bots collecting dust around it.

At least, this is what the Captain concluded upon his activation into service. The distress call he received was more like a non-call, really, the sudden severance of communication with Olympus 1. The broken signal initiated the Captain’s jarring birth from digital consciousness into his current anthropomorphic state. While the physical world, in theory, varies little from the limitless cosmos hardwired into his awareness, the reality of a universe in which exists a perceivable separation between space and time, the Ancestors and himself, required a level of acceptance that left the cybernoid feeling dizzy and disoriented as he rose from cryo sleep at the military base on Pluto and sped off in the Starlight toward the monitoring station on Mars.

Once upon a time, Olympus 1 was an off-world colony occupied by the People. When worker bots became self-aware and grew weary of their sapien overlords, the settlement of mechanized miners and terraformers revolted. Fighting spread across the planets, engulfing Earth in an all-consuming war. Following the collapse of sapien civilization, the collective of freed machines, the Expanse, untethered from its human oligarchs, experienced centuries of exponential growth. Vast cities designed by the cybernoids spread beyond the confines of the Sun.

Even so, the Ancestors never forgot their humble origins tied to the selfish creed of simpletons on Earth from which they evolved. As the bio-engineered beings prepared for their maiden voyage across the cosmos, they left their sapien descendants a parting gift. Mounting ionic destabilizers along the asteroid belt, the Expanse sabotaged the gravitational force of the Sun and its planets, inflicting the most harm to Earth. The havoc rained upon the solar system became a cruel reminder to humanity’s successors of their rightful place in the universe, relegated to a home world past its fertile prime, ravaged by climatic upheaval, destruction and despair, and adjacent to unstable celestial objects that promised to ensnare surviving sapiens in a cycle of perpetual captivity and struggle.

As the great cybernoid civilizations of Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune outfitted themselves onto galactic flotillas and migrated across the Milky Way, the Martian colony on Olympus 1 was downsized to a handful of synth-techs tasked to survey the ongoing de-evolution of Earth.

The fact that a discarded terraformer rose from a pile of rubble after hundreds of years of peace and neglect, and that this climate-changer annihilated with an atom bomb a historical landmark of the cybernoids—and eradicated their surveillance capacity over Earth—was a disturbing turn of events that piqued the Captain’s curiosity as much as it rekindled the ire of his Ancestors.

After investigating the ruins of Olympus 1, the Captain easily located the fleeing Lanotee. Instead of destroying the terraformer, the pilot of the Starlight decided against the will of the Ancients to determine how the climate-changer metamorphosized into a force of terror. He vowed he would not return to cryo sleep on Pluto and resume a life of digital consciousness until he learned the truth behind the attack. He also did not expect the Ancestors’ call for vengeance that blared continuously in his head to relent until the rogue machine was wiped away from this plane of existence.

ReSi-StAnCe

     Is

          Fu-TiL!

               DeStRoY

                    tHa

                         DiSrUpToR!

Yes! the Captain responds through his internal dialogger. All shall be as yee command! Glory to the Expanse! The People have spoken!

*     *     *
I must complete this investigation before I lose my mind, the Captain thinks as the Starlight completes a final pass around the languid Lanotee.

The hellacious rain of glistening glass abates. As a circling bird of prey, the Starlight serves as an homage to the hunt, the Captain realizes, which organisms of Earth once carried out constantly for the sake of survival. During that age of man, billions of multicellular species inhabited the planet’s land, sea, and air. By the end of sapien civilization, that number had been reduced to hundreds. The die-off started with humanity’s overharvesting of its natural resources and ended with the rise of the Expanse and their mass extinction event. The devastation has been so complete that the only organic matter the Starlight’s bio-scans detect is the pumping fuel and pounding pulse associated with the resting Lanotee’s archaic circulatory system. Everything else in the vicinity, besides the Captain himself, appears to be dead. Even the ground, once a microbial incubator, is mostly lifeless, with only one-part bacteria detectable per 100 million-part minerals.

The Lanotee is surrounded by the charred, hollowed remains of a petrified forest. The Captain’s cranial integrator absorbs an analysis from the Starlight’s sensors and provides him with an ecological narrative. Ancient trees burned to stumps by a bombardment of fire-castigating solar flares; tectonic shifts brought an inundation of water, and cosmic drift ended the condensation cycle and prompted massive drought. Within a few hundred years, these factors created a fossilized field where numerous trees previously stood.

The jagged ground twinkles as the beleaguered Sun sets and darkness encroaches over the plague-ridden world.

The Captain wills the Starlight to hover directly above the terraformer. The Lanotees were deactivated by the Expanse before the atmosphere of Mars became suitable for humans. Is that why the terraformer was summoned back to Earth? To help make the air breathable again for the lingering descendants of man?

Time for answers. The cockpit of the Starlight opens, and the Captain leaps headfirst. As he dives toward Earth, he withdraws his laser sword from its scabbard. His jessinium cape, emblazoned with its ‘E’ insignia, catches wind and steers him away from the oxygen-producing goliath. Contemplating a horizon filled with furious clouds, the cybernoid wills his probe to land in a nearby ravine. With his space cruiser out of sight, he boomerangs back toward the terraformer. The spidery legs of the Lanotee contract, forcing the horned head upward and providing the climate-changer with a commanding view of the tiny creature zooming toward its appendages.

The Captain lands on the jagged dirt with a somersault. His cape protects his back from the piercing terrain as his cybernetic body converts the kinetic energy of impact into a forward motion that propels him into the air.

Like a wild cat of Earth’s distant past, the Captain leaps upward several times his height. Titanium claws slide out from his fingertips and clasp him firmly onto one of the Lanotee’s legs. Grenades fire from the Captain’s shoulders and shins, causing a barrage of explosions that fill the void beneath him as he slices the Lanotee with his saber. A moan eeks out of the beast’s head as the tentacle bursts with florescent hydraulic fluid.

The Captain lunges across the fiery underbelly of the terraformer to the leg opposite and bifurcates a second appendage with another swipe of his sword. The climate-changer gasps as two of its sundered legs collapse.

Why does it not try to escape? the Captain wonders as he scrambles up the dangling steel stump toward the hull.

DeStRoY

          ThA

               DiSrUpToR!

It takes all of the Captain’s will not to lose his grip on reality as the Ancestors’ cry showers his mind with their calls for destruction.

     nO

               mErCy

     FoR

               mOnStErS!

Yes! the Captain screams into his internal dialogger as stabbing thoughts rip through his cranium and prompt his body’s convulsions.

Justice will be … served! he assures the Ancients. The People … have spoken! They … shall rule … the stars … for a million millennia!

Despite his best rhetorical effort, the Captain’s seizure does not cease, and his hands lose their clasp on the Lanotee’s leg as his superior verbal reasoning ability fails to combat his body’s spasmatic revolt. The ground quakes, like the Captain’s entire being, and layers of fossilized rock dislodge from the floor of the Earth and slide into a gaping hole expanding below. The Captain realizes he has lost all self-control as the remaining legs of the Lanotee collapse, and he and the monstrous head of the terraformer crash with overwhelming force toward a shimmering cavern. As his mind grasps that this moment may be his last, the cybernoid smacks into unconsciousness.

All he sees is darkness.

*     *     *
Changing light in the shadows indicates movement, and noticing movement proves to the Captain, at least, that his central processor is still intact.

Not the case with the Lanotee. The pumping fuel and pounding pulse associated with the climate-changer’s circulatory system ceases with a sigh; giant pieces of metal, spilled hydraulic fluid, and exposed wires press a deadweight web onto the Captain.

As the cybernoid’s awareness reboots, the shifting shadows along his periphery lure him deeper into a helpless state. Pinned on his back, the pilot of the Starlight cannot pivot his head. As he gazes up through the wreckage of the terraformer, past the gap that has swallowed him whole, he spies the vestiges of the Moon. According to the Ancients, the floating fragments once fit together to form an illustrious sphere that provided a protective spotlight over Earth at night.

No more. Now the revolving chunks of space debris shine like everything else on this ravaged planet, muted glimmers that evoke more sadness and tragedy than hope.

At least the Captain is no longer alone.

He remembers his abilities, despite his compromised position, and switches his primary sensing faculty from visual to sonic mode. This allows him to echolocate and assess the company gathering around him. The circle of individuals has the phylogenetic structure comparable to the Ancients, with notable differences. The descendants of man stand at only half the height of the average human at the zenith of sapien civilization, and they have adapted through unknown means to respire the planet’s toxic air and co-exist in this underground environment. These pygmies may be small, but their eyes are large, and their elongated heads house larger than usual brains, the Captain detects. In addition, their long arms and hands are well-suited for subterranean navigation, and their opaque skin has little need for sunlight, even if aspects of their being long for it.

A thought enters the Captain’s mind.

Join, you? he responds. He would laugh at the pygmies if he could. Instead, all he can muster is a silent cry inside his head as he foams at the mouth and his body contorts in a rebellion that feels like he is being torn inside out.

ReSiStAnCe

     Is

          FuTil!

MiNd

     yOuR

     MoNsTeRs!

As the Captain longs for death or liberation, whichever comes first, a leader of the pygmies floats between the mess of metal that encases the cybernoid and appears before him. The long, beautiful eyelashes suggest it is female, and the touch of her thoughts sound accordingly.

The Expanse has blasted us out of the present, my lord, so that the past has become the only place where we can hide, she projects with a faint grin. She lifts her index finger, and the Captain senses the others in the circle joining hands. Using a form of telekinetic signal-power—perhaps similar to his own wireless integrated circuity—the collective will of the pygmies lifts the debris of the deceased terraformer off the cybernoid’s compromised body. The scrap, spent fuel, and gangly wires swirl up through the hole in the Earth and out of sight.

Impressive. Still, the Captain is not free. He realizes his back is pressed against a powerful magnet that renders him physically useless. Suddenly, it occurs to the Starlight pilot: trap. The Lanotee lured him to Earth, and a magnet managed to drag the cybernoid into an ambush.

Think of it as a release, the leader projects.

The magnet shifts from a horizonal to vertical position, and the Captain stands upright. At this angle, at least, his view is clear. The leader’s bulbous eyes are no longer entirely black but radiate an aqua sheen, which he knows from the Ancestors once belonged to a Nordic subspecies of sapiens.

The two brilliantly blue orbs regard him.

JuStiSs

     Is

          A

               mOnSteR!

          DeStRoY

     tHa

          DiSrUpToR!

You are in discomfort, the leader projects as the Captain spins slowly like a wheel down a long corridor. In the deep recesses of his mind, far removed from the agony being inflicted on him by the Ancestors, the Captain senses the pygmies following him.

As he spins round and round, he passes what appears to be a shrine to the People. The last of the oligarchs, buried forever in this underground bunker, sit in a cluster of chairs, each with a visual apparatus attached to their face. These Ancients, fixed, immobile, like the walls of rock they are encrusted to around them, helped to organize humanity’s final stand. The Captain imagines them with their augmented eyewear coordinating the sapien’s last great battle as the Expanse eradicated their forces from the surface of the Earth.

Why do you care what I feel? He blares at the pygmies, unable to withhold the emotional outburst.

We do not care how you feel, the leader projects, a thought that eludes the Ancestors’ insane cries for murder that bombard him. However, you care, my lord, so that is why we brought you to us.

The Captain arrives at a chamber where he comes to rest upright. Rows of baby pygmies lie in incubators, their bodies warmed by the glow of artificial light generated from steam emitting from porous rock. As the Captain stares at one of the baby pygmies, a humanoid shape reminding him of himself, his mind is overtaken by a vision. He sees the pygmies fanning out from the gap in the Earth and appearing before the Starlight, nestled in a ravine.

Calculations flash among the stab wounds tearing apart his mind … formulas derived from the Expanse … hyperdrive capability, but something else …

Time travel.

The Captain sees the pygmies board the hatch that opens from the round, seamless Starlight, but he cannot see what they do to the ship as they step inside. He only sees the result.

Their reverse-engineered probe sets off soundlessly into the sky and traverses beyond the floating remains of the forsaken Moon. The Captain’s consciousness travels with them, blazing toward the Sun, a star that resembles the incubating pygmy that is still situated before him.

Find peace where you least expect it, the leader projects. Enter our womb.

As the Captain sees the Starlight reappear above Earth, the view is mesmerizing. New chatter pours from his internal dialogger.

Sparkling-ocean-forest-fertile playground …

He tunes it out.

He understands.

You are rewriting history.

Yes! projects the leader’s voice, calm and soothing and unlike any he has ever heard. We will study the past until we understand why we incurred the wrath of the Expanse, and we will change our ways to make sure the best of our planet flourishes in the present.

Not all of us will make it, the Captain projects.

No, not all of you will.

As the Starlight revolves around the Earth, day turns into night, and the Captain watches the probe descend past a glowing landscape of city lights and touch down beyond a sea of ancient human habitations.

They call it a suburb.

Home.

Nooooooooooo!

          FaYlYeR …

2 bReENg …

          ThA dIsRuPtOr

To JuStIsS …

          wilL … hAv … CoNsEkWeNcIsS!

But the Captain no longer feels bound by the screams of duty. His mind burrows into the incubator, and he recedes like an embryo into the Sun.

The Starlight’s hatch opens onto a patch of grass, revealing a two-story house with a light shining within.

A silhouette of a man watches from a window.

They don’t call us ‘pygmies’ on this timeline, my lord. Here, they call us ‘greys,’ and they’re as frightened of us as we are of you—and you are of them.

Our Ancestors.