Post by veronw on Jan 29, 2024 18:18:50 GMT
Varen (Meta-Sax) — 08/20/2023 9:22 PM
Meyhunume had been bemused as the people arranging the concert promptly got the placement of the follow up group wrong. What was clearly not Sugar Rush - but rather good in of itself regardless - took the stage and played their music.
The haleel was only mildly interested. It was fairly standard in comparison to the oddity of the sodalyte beings. They drew his eye. The way they moved, the way they shaped themselves. The scent of them was off, but not in an unpleasing way.
Like a rotted flower from memories taken from Home. Wilted. Damaged. Trapped and caged without realizing the pot they're in is poison.
He flicks his tongue out, tasting the air again.
Having allowed his natural biology to reassert itself, he wears the form he typically does. The biosuit is skin-tight, off color to adhere to the ridiculous physical taboos of the local beings and the strict extraction of a promise to behave by the resident cladeship constellation.
Meyhunume ran a hand across his snout and scoffed under his breath. Wasn't as if he was trying to make things more challenging for them. He was just fulfilling his higal, as they were.
Scents changed and the energy level altered, instantly catching his attention.
"Ah..."
He saw them. Four little ones, tiny little beings that defied classification of even Meyhunume's deity. The thought tickled him greatly as he sunk part of himself back into The Duality to record the instance for The Flow.
Ang was already waiting, "Well?"
"Hush, they're starting."
The cladeship - the qelnari twin of the mighty DTAI - was unamused, but accepted the haleelians eccentricities.
As far as songs went, the first was within expectations. The memetic infection rate was, however, shockingly low. He'd been warned vehemently by Ang that these were tricky creatures, prone to using memetics to infect and infest to compel cooperation and control, leaving the Constellation endlessly scrambling to scrub communications and relays.
But here, Meyhunume sensed nothing. As a Singer, he was well aware of the power of sound over the mind and heart, but in their voices, there was.. just an eagerness. A restlessness.
He didn't know what to think about that.
Bellini, Martini, Mary, Cosmo.
The haleel flicked his tongue out again.
He saw the hand-signs, as he figured any other attentive being would. Sifting through a massive library in moments of language files, he found himself drawing a blank on a reasonable meaning outside of "potential subtle indication of clandestine course of action."
There was no doubt in his mind that they were dangerous beings, but they wouldn't do something foolish during a good-will tour to remedy their image, would they?
Ang's expression in the seat next to him shifted. The change may as well have been a screaming storm of warnings for the way it set Meyhunume's heckles on fire, "What is it?"
"So far nothing.. I'd say reclock to baseline to be safe."
Flexing several subtle muscles within his mind, the haleelian moved away from his personal syncing with the thought-speed of the locals and back into a state more natural for a Saxheelian. Things slowed to an icey crawl as he looked back over at Ang, "What's the problem?"
"Not sure. Gamma ray intensity in the upper atmosphere has increased, coinciding with the change of behavior. The Sodalyte are not prone to this."
In The Real, time passed sufficiently for the words to pour out, the change in demeaner to take full affect, for their rationalization to make itself manifest.
It shocked Ang and Meyhunume in different degrees - the cladeship had grown convinced that the Sodalyte's were nothing more than autonomous weapons left over by an extinct species or created by a third party yet hidden from their sight.
Meyhunume had expected a simple bubbly continuation, with perhaps, a curious intercession into a nuanced song.
Instead, both Saxheelians were glued to their seats, listening and recording with rapt attention as the quad lept into their song.
Almost immediately, Meyhunume noticed the difference. The tonal shift, the sudden departure of routine, the independence of action. It made everything else they'd done slot neatly into place: Ang wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. There was something else transpiring, a form of rebellion? An emergence?
His higal screamed from within him to learn more. He had to know. He had to understand. This music. This soul.
The haleelian blinked - irises contract, split open, and no longer hide the true depth of his vision. He watches everything as they spin around in the air, as the foglets fill the stadium. His ears attune themselves to frequencies few others can hear with a sensitivity that could overwhelm the unprepared.
Every heart in that stadium, every shuffle, every breath was heard. But the attention of that mind was directed with singular passion to the song that was roaring from within the depths of the souls of the four.
The crescendo his its reach; Meyhunume's hearts soared, for suddenly, he saw exactly what he expected. They were more than simply organic machines. They were genuinely alive.
And then, they were dead.
From his position deep within the upper levels of the stadium, he could do nothing but watch. Ang was in orbit, and action from him would result in unfortunate consequences. Both of them knew they could do nothing as the missile crossed the threshold. They followed it - one with eyes on the ground, the other with a thousand-thousand eyes up above - as it arced across the stage and swiftly gutted them.
He hesitated.
Calculating the distance from where he stood to the stage, it would take him eleven seconds to reach their position. But then what? He knew nothing of their anatomy.
"Don't. They're already dead."
Ang's voice was sorrowful, but it seemed to Meyhunume that his companion did not grasp the same level of revelation.
"I'll send a vac to pick you up."
"I'd rather stay. I want to ascertain if there is.. anything left that can be done. I will be careful."
It was not their way to forbid their own kind their intrigues, especially when one came from the higals that they did. One explored the cosmos, the other explored pleasure - it was a mutual acquiscence that neither side would be fully fulfilled in this moment that led Ang to give in.
"Very well. Transport to Zenith HQ will be arranged."
"Thank you, Ang."
The figure vanished, leaving Meyhunume alone on this world. No other Saxheelian was around, and no cladeship in orbit, he would be left to his own devices. Which was fine, he preferred it that way anyways.
Resyncing himself to the other beings around him, he stood up slowly. The stage had cleared and the bodies were gone. Ignoring the roaring of people around him, he pushed himself off the lip of the box he had been perching on and moved to the backstage. No one questioned him - they'd at least been aware of his presence prior.
Sniffing at the air, he wondered.
Bellini, Martini, Mary, Cosmo.
Their blood had been distinctive. The scent almost immediate and powerful. Sweet, even, which for a herbivore was a strange sensation. It made his teeth jitter mildly, his tail twitch in agitation.
They were not close, but their scent was heavy. Everywhere.
"I wonder.."
Repairing a human who had endured such a wound was simple. Any vila qai could do it, any Saxheelian doubly so. But these were far more interesting aliens in comparison. Similar, in a vague way, to a Saxheelian.
Which likely would complicate things.. yet.. at the same time..
He wanted it.
He wanted to see what was within their souls. What made them do what they did. Clearly, based on what he'd seen, they had known their fate. They had understood what was going to happen. They chose, actively, willingly, to defy their purpose.
A most Saxheelian trait indeed.
Flicking his tongue out again, he tasted a hearty dose of bloody mary coming from the outer ends of the complex. It mingled with the garbage sea that filled this world, the miasma of it clouding his deeper visual cortex.
Blinking, he closed all the added senses until he was left with simple visual and thermal. It would be enough to scour the garbage piles - no doubt, whatever remained would be warm.
The scent took him deeper into the pits of rot, leaving him to ponder just how ruthlessly they had been discarded, and how swiftly it had transpired.
Yet, the blood did not lie, nor did the trail he followed. If they could be found, it would be more challenging to get them offworld without a cladeship available..
But he was a singer, he was utterly confident in his capacity to find alternative routes.
Closing in, he noted a series of deep black bags. They were moist, heavy, thick with the mixed smells of blood and death. The lingering of other scents was there as well, other Sodalytes perhaps? He wasn't sure, but he was certain that he was alone in this particular alleyway of garbage.
Touching the bag, he immediately knew he'd found them.
"Bellini. Martini. Mary. Cosmo. What did your souls seek? What did you want?"
Image
Dokky | Mentshn & Sodalytes — 10/20/2023 6:24 PM
The bags weighed heavy among the trash, mixed with a mulch of the four biots' paraphanelia. Perhaps more sickeningly than if they had simply been disposed, Meyhunume could see splotches of color holoburned into the membranes of the disposed ads and merchandise. Decoding the half-barcode, half-text revealed a sickening slurry of thoughtforms.
TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE/STATE/COUNTRY/FANBASE/FAMILY, one said. YOU BROKE/FORGOT/DESTROYED/IGNORED MY HEART/FAITH/TRUST/ADORATION, said another. Message after message of hatred and betrayal surrounded their corpses in a wash of garbage, left by the Sodalytes who had come in-person to see them. Despite the bags merely being filled with their fluid, however, Meyhunume found something else among the debris - after some examination, he could feel soft objects intact within the Coronan latex. Extracting them revealed long, silver implements the length of perhaps his forearm; flat and circular at one end, pointed at the other. Those sticks that Happosei-Type Sodalytes wore in their hair.
What were they doing with their bodies, when everything else of value seemed to have been stripped from the goo? Who had even done this?
More importantly, could he even bring them back?
Varen (Meta-Sax) — 10/22/2023 12:59 PM
Each a question that would take considerable effort for him to answer. They were still fundamentally alien to him, and with Ang and the others gone and tending to galactic affairs, he'd have no others to rely upon until he reached Zenith HQ.
Sitting on his haunches, he did a visual examination of the bags. Hate messages were a curiosity, revealing that perhaps there were more elements involved than just immitations and fascimilies. Or, the greater zeitgeist of the Sodalytes had a particularly twisted sense of humor and was deficient enough in motives that its attention to detail bordered on the absurd.
If these are just armatures and creations, why bother with hate messages? If they were just large modeled imitations of sentience, was it just carrying out its programming to mirror what happened to disgraced artists in the past?
How much of what transpired was real, and how much of what transpired was fake?
Staring at hairsticks he'd extracted from the bags, he pondered at their use and utility. To discard them here as well implied that they had no value, were utterly worthless, yes, they were also clearly related to the singers in some form. Sifting through information sent by his beloved Ang, he knew that the hairsticks were common enough among the Happosei Sodalytes, but their purpose was unknown.
Pushing himself a little closer to the begs using the powerful muscles in his tail, he tipped forward and sniffed again. Pheromonal signatures were most excellent fingerprints, and with some degree of luck, he may be able to ascertain who or what was nearby - who was responsible.
Not that he had a mind to follow them, at least, not right now. He needed first to figure out what can and cannot be gleaned from the goo in the bags.
Running a hand over the surface of one, he sighed, "I am sorry, my little peers. If only you were not so similar to us, this would be simple."
Plugging himself into the local Flow, he tapped into the databases for Zenith.
They would no doubt have facilities that would be capable of meeting his needs, and with Ang having arranged transport, it would be just a matter of waiting for them to arrive. The thoughts drift briefly as he considers several potential pathways.
Then he snorts and shakes his head, rubbing at his s
Meyhunume had been bemused as the people arranging the concert promptly got the placement of the follow up group wrong. What was clearly not Sugar Rush - but rather good in of itself regardless - took the stage and played their music.
The haleel was only mildly interested. It was fairly standard in comparison to the oddity of the sodalyte beings. They drew his eye. The way they moved, the way they shaped themselves. The scent of them was off, but not in an unpleasing way.
Like a rotted flower from memories taken from Home. Wilted. Damaged. Trapped and caged without realizing the pot they're in is poison.
He flicks his tongue out, tasting the air again.
Having allowed his natural biology to reassert itself, he wears the form he typically does. The biosuit is skin-tight, off color to adhere to the ridiculous physical taboos of the local beings and the strict extraction of a promise to behave by the resident cladeship constellation.
Meyhunume ran a hand across his snout and scoffed under his breath. Wasn't as if he was trying to make things more challenging for them. He was just fulfilling his higal, as they were.
Scents changed and the energy level altered, instantly catching his attention.
"Ah..."
He saw them. Four little ones, tiny little beings that defied classification of even Meyhunume's deity. The thought tickled him greatly as he sunk part of himself back into The Duality to record the instance for The Flow.
Ang was already waiting, "Well?"
"Hush, they're starting."
The cladeship - the qelnari twin of the mighty DTAI - was unamused, but accepted the haleelians eccentricities.
As far as songs went, the first was within expectations. The memetic infection rate was, however, shockingly low. He'd been warned vehemently by Ang that these were tricky creatures, prone to using memetics to infect and infest to compel cooperation and control, leaving the Constellation endlessly scrambling to scrub communications and relays.
But here, Meyhunume sensed nothing. As a Singer, he was well aware of the power of sound over the mind and heart, but in their voices, there was.. just an eagerness. A restlessness.
He didn't know what to think about that.
Bellini, Martini, Mary, Cosmo.
The haleel flicked his tongue out again.
He saw the hand-signs, as he figured any other attentive being would. Sifting through a massive library in moments of language files, he found himself drawing a blank on a reasonable meaning outside of "potential subtle indication of clandestine course of action."
There was no doubt in his mind that they were dangerous beings, but they wouldn't do something foolish during a good-will tour to remedy their image, would they?
Ang's expression in the seat next to him shifted. The change may as well have been a screaming storm of warnings for the way it set Meyhunume's heckles on fire, "What is it?"
"So far nothing.. I'd say reclock to baseline to be safe."
Flexing several subtle muscles within his mind, the haleelian moved away from his personal syncing with the thought-speed of the locals and back into a state more natural for a Saxheelian. Things slowed to an icey crawl as he looked back over at Ang, "What's the problem?"
"Not sure. Gamma ray intensity in the upper atmosphere has increased, coinciding with the change of behavior. The Sodalyte are not prone to this."
In The Real, time passed sufficiently for the words to pour out, the change in demeaner to take full affect, for their rationalization to make itself manifest.
It shocked Ang and Meyhunume in different degrees - the cladeship had grown convinced that the Sodalyte's were nothing more than autonomous weapons left over by an extinct species or created by a third party yet hidden from their sight.
Meyhunume had expected a simple bubbly continuation, with perhaps, a curious intercession into a nuanced song.
Instead, both Saxheelians were glued to their seats, listening and recording with rapt attention as the quad lept into their song.
Almost immediately, Meyhunume noticed the difference. The tonal shift, the sudden departure of routine, the independence of action. It made everything else they'd done slot neatly into place: Ang wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. There was something else transpiring, a form of rebellion? An emergence?
His higal screamed from within him to learn more. He had to know. He had to understand. This music. This soul.
The haleelian blinked - irises contract, split open, and no longer hide the true depth of his vision. He watches everything as they spin around in the air, as the foglets fill the stadium. His ears attune themselves to frequencies few others can hear with a sensitivity that could overwhelm the unprepared.
Every heart in that stadium, every shuffle, every breath was heard. But the attention of that mind was directed with singular passion to the song that was roaring from within the depths of the souls of the four.
The crescendo his its reach; Meyhunume's hearts soared, for suddenly, he saw exactly what he expected. They were more than simply organic machines. They were genuinely alive.
And then, they were dead.
From his position deep within the upper levels of the stadium, he could do nothing but watch. Ang was in orbit, and action from him would result in unfortunate consequences. Both of them knew they could do nothing as the missile crossed the threshold. They followed it - one with eyes on the ground, the other with a thousand-thousand eyes up above - as it arced across the stage and swiftly gutted them.
He hesitated.
Calculating the distance from where he stood to the stage, it would take him eleven seconds to reach their position. But then what? He knew nothing of their anatomy.
"Don't. They're already dead."
Ang's voice was sorrowful, but it seemed to Meyhunume that his companion did not grasp the same level of revelation.
"I'll send a vac to pick you up."
"I'd rather stay. I want to ascertain if there is.. anything left that can be done. I will be careful."
It was not their way to forbid their own kind their intrigues, especially when one came from the higals that they did. One explored the cosmos, the other explored pleasure - it was a mutual acquiscence that neither side would be fully fulfilled in this moment that led Ang to give in.
"Very well. Transport to Zenith HQ will be arranged."
"Thank you, Ang."
The figure vanished, leaving Meyhunume alone on this world. No other Saxheelian was around, and no cladeship in orbit, he would be left to his own devices. Which was fine, he preferred it that way anyways.
Resyncing himself to the other beings around him, he stood up slowly. The stage had cleared and the bodies were gone. Ignoring the roaring of people around him, he pushed himself off the lip of the box he had been perching on and moved to the backstage. No one questioned him - they'd at least been aware of his presence prior.
Sniffing at the air, he wondered.
Bellini, Martini, Mary, Cosmo.
Their blood had been distinctive. The scent almost immediate and powerful. Sweet, even, which for a herbivore was a strange sensation. It made his teeth jitter mildly, his tail twitch in agitation.
They were not close, but their scent was heavy. Everywhere.
"I wonder.."
Repairing a human who had endured such a wound was simple. Any vila qai could do it, any Saxheelian doubly so. But these were far more interesting aliens in comparison. Similar, in a vague way, to a Saxheelian.
Which likely would complicate things.. yet.. at the same time..
He wanted it.
He wanted to see what was within their souls. What made them do what they did. Clearly, based on what he'd seen, they had known their fate. They had understood what was going to happen. They chose, actively, willingly, to defy their purpose.
A most Saxheelian trait indeed.
Flicking his tongue out again, he tasted a hearty dose of bloody mary coming from the outer ends of the complex. It mingled with the garbage sea that filled this world, the miasma of it clouding his deeper visual cortex.
Blinking, he closed all the added senses until he was left with simple visual and thermal. It would be enough to scour the garbage piles - no doubt, whatever remained would be warm.
The scent took him deeper into the pits of rot, leaving him to ponder just how ruthlessly they had been discarded, and how swiftly it had transpired.
Yet, the blood did not lie, nor did the trail he followed. If they could be found, it would be more challenging to get them offworld without a cladeship available..
But he was a singer, he was utterly confident in his capacity to find alternative routes.
Closing in, he noted a series of deep black bags. They were moist, heavy, thick with the mixed smells of blood and death. The lingering of other scents was there as well, other Sodalytes perhaps? He wasn't sure, but he was certain that he was alone in this particular alleyway of garbage.
Touching the bag, he immediately knew he'd found them.
"Bellini. Martini. Mary. Cosmo. What did your souls seek? What did you want?"
Image
Dokky | Mentshn & Sodalytes — 10/20/2023 6:24 PM
The bags weighed heavy among the trash, mixed with a mulch of the four biots' paraphanelia. Perhaps more sickeningly than if they had simply been disposed, Meyhunume could see splotches of color holoburned into the membranes of the disposed ads and merchandise. Decoding the half-barcode, half-text revealed a sickening slurry of thoughtforms.
TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE/STATE/COUNTRY/FANBASE/FAMILY, one said. YOU BROKE/FORGOT/DESTROYED/IGNORED MY HEART/FAITH/TRUST/ADORATION, said another. Message after message of hatred and betrayal surrounded their corpses in a wash of garbage, left by the Sodalytes who had come in-person to see them. Despite the bags merely being filled with their fluid, however, Meyhunume found something else among the debris - after some examination, he could feel soft objects intact within the Coronan latex. Extracting them revealed long, silver implements the length of perhaps his forearm; flat and circular at one end, pointed at the other. Those sticks that Happosei-Type Sodalytes wore in their hair.
What were they doing with their bodies, when everything else of value seemed to have been stripped from the goo? Who had even done this?
More importantly, could he even bring them back?
Varen (Meta-Sax) — 10/22/2023 12:59 PM
Each a question that would take considerable effort for him to answer. They were still fundamentally alien to him, and with Ang and the others gone and tending to galactic affairs, he'd have no others to rely upon until he reached Zenith HQ.
Sitting on his haunches, he did a visual examination of the bags. Hate messages were a curiosity, revealing that perhaps there were more elements involved than just immitations and fascimilies. Or, the greater zeitgeist of the Sodalytes had a particularly twisted sense of humor and was deficient enough in motives that its attention to detail bordered on the absurd.
If these are just armatures and creations, why bother with hate messages? If they were just large modeled imitations of sentience, was it just carrying out its programming to mirror what happened to disgraced artists in the past?
How much of what transpired was real, and how much of what transpired was fake?
Staring at hairsticks he'd extracted from the bags, he pondered at their use and utility. To discard them here as well implied that they had no value, were utterly worthless, yes, they were also clearly related to the singers in some form. Sifting through information sent by his beloved Ang, he knew that the hairsticks were common enough among the Happosei Sodalytes, but their purpose was unknown.
Pushing himself a little closer to the begs using the powerful muscles in his tail, he tipped forward and sniffed again. Pheromonal signatures were most excellent fingerprints, and with some degree of luck, he may be able to ascertain who or what was nearby - who was responsible.
Not that he had a mind to follow them, at least, not right now. He needed first to figure out what can and cannot be gleaned from the goo in the bags.
Running a hand over the surface of one, he sighed, "I am sorry, my little peers. If only you were not so similar to us, this would be simple."
Plugging himself into the local Flow, he tapped into the databases for Zenith.
They would no doubt have facilities that would be capable of meeting his needs, and with Ang having arranged transport, it would be just a matter of waiting for them to arrive. The thoughts drift briefly as he considers several potential pathways.
Then he snorts and shakes his head, rubbing at his s