To Vassago
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Karl the Mad
- Posts: 1260
- Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
- Location: Oregon
To Vassago
You can see multiple timelines, right? What happens in the ones where Vlastos would have won, when he was trying to destroy everything?
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IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3709
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Vassago
Vassago glances up at Karl, then nervously looks back down, muttering as he turns to open a drawer stuffed with index cards. As he does, two instances of himself split away and also break away into more and further copies, likely to investigate further.
"The, um, unfortunate thing about apocalypse-level events is that as far as the End of Days is concerned, what Pride ended up creating still left several avenues for Life to flourish. That means a ton of records, a ton of would-be resources that don't make much sense outside of these walls - and then there's the Vlastos timeline."
A copy of his stops to drop off a large volume. Vassago more or less thanks himself and then spends a few minutes thumbing through decaying records covered in plastic sleeves, licking his index finger and thumb every so often to make leafing through pages more efficient.
"The one constant is that Marius wouldn't really have been able to end all life on Earth. To do that, he would've needed God's Cosmic Microwave, more or less, something so unimaginably radioactive that even a tardigrade's cryptobiosis wouldn't have saved it - and the problem with radioactivity is that most living things are adaptable to it. Add to that the unliving, like some vampire breeds, and you'd get a world where the living are represented by slime molds and complex microbes, and the sapient are mostly stuck raiding each other for whatever blood or sustenance would be left. I've seen forks where Hell or Heaven take over - and things don't go well for Marius if it's Heaven. Gabriel is, um, let's just say angry at him, and eventually gives the Alexandrian what he more or less wanted. Non-existence. The end of his personal suffering, with every single atom in his Self being torn off and tossed out into the Universe's farthest reaches."
He keeps flicking through pages. "There's a few Warlord-type events where he instead takes to this new opposition, in which case most undead become custodians for whatever's left of Humanity and Vlastos ends up playing Thulsa Doom in worlds that look like someone smushed Conan the Barbarian together with The Day After - but everything gets fragmentary past a certain point. Anything that doesn't become concrete fades from my records after some time. The Multiverse doesn't really seem to like to render weaker probabilities as anything more than blips or trans-universal peeps, like What-If stories - so I can't get a complete sense of it all."
He seems like he's done, and then steps away, seemingly remembering something. "There is one particular thread, though, that I really wish I could pull on more concisely... So Vlastos gets his way, the world falls apart, magic dies - and he's all alone in his compound. But then - get this - the Noise changes its tune. He fuels his plane, raids the remnants of Ruthven International and Raven's respective holdings, and snags the template files for the Chimera races. He goes back to Antarctica, spends decades studying genetics and CRISPR gene-editing - and eventually uses Chimera material to re-create feature-complete humans and caprine, feline and saurian anthros. A little work gets him to figure out how Eiko Kazamatsuri managed to use Aspasia as a template for the Blue Chimeras while preserving and developing genetic diversity, and he eventually designs biomechanical systems designed to autonomously support Agnates in formation."
He sighs as he turns a few pages. "So on and so forth for ten, fiften thousand years or so and, well..."
The last book is then closed with a thud. "Marius Vlastos, the New Father of Mankind. For once, his Noise is quiet about these lifeforms' potential, seeing as he's overseen their development and taught them to teach one another what they'd need to survive in the wastelands outside. His Noise starts chattering about what's outside the solar system, about what could harm him and his creations that he hasn't had the time to forsee - but this particular version of Humanity doesn't trigger aversion or disgust in him. For once in what probably feels like an eternity, he's proud of someone else. Several someones. Enough so that he's called a few of them son or daughter - or even sired them as new vampires."
His smile turns into a slight grimace. "It's a fun read, but the recent past, present and immediate future make better thrillers if you ask me. You see Time the way I do, you learn to appreciate things as they happen."
"The, um, unfortunate thing about apocalypse-level events is that as far as the End of Days is concerned, what Pride ended up creating still left several avenues for Life to flourish. That means a ton of records, a ton of would-be resources that don't make much sense outside of these walls - and then there's the Vlastos timeline."
A copy of his stops to drop off a large volume. Vassago more or less thanks himself and then spends a few minutes thumbing through decaying records covered in plastic sleeves, licking his index finger and thumb every so often to make leafing through pages more efficient.
"The one constant is that Marius wouldn't really have been able to end all life on Earth. To do that, he would've needed God's Cosmic Microwave, more or less, something so unimaginably radioactive that even a tardigrade's cryptobiosis wouldn't have saved it - and the problem with radioactivity is that most living things are adaptable to it. Add to that the unliving, like some vampire breeds, and you'd get a world where the living are represented by slime molds and complex microbes, and the sapient are mostly stuck raiding each other for whatever blood or sustenance would be left. I've seen forks where Hell or Heaven take over - and things don't go well for Marius if it's Heaven. Gabriel is, um, let's just say angry at him, and eventually gives the Alexandrian what he more or less wanted. Non-existence. The end of his personal suffering, with every single atom in his Self being torn off and tossed out into the Universe's farthest reaches."
He keeps flicking through pages. "There's a few Warlord-type events where he instead takes to this new opposition, in which case most undead become custodians for whatever's left of Humanity and Vlastos ends up playing Thulsa Doom in worlds that look like someone smushed Conan the Barbarian together with The Day After - but everything gets fragmentary past a certain point. Anything that doesn't become concrete fades from my records after some time. The Multiverse doesn't really seem to like to render weaker probabilities as anything more than blips or trans-universal peeps, like What-If stories - so I can't get a complete sense of it all."
He seems like he's done, and then steps away, seemingly remembering something. "There is one particular thread, though, that I really wish I could pull on more concisely... So Vlastos gets his way, the world falls apart, magic dies - and he's all alone in his compound. But then - get this - the Noise changes its tune. He fuels his plane, raids the remnants of Ruthven International and Raven's respective holdings, and snags the template files for the Chimera races. He goes back to Antarctica, spends decades studying genetics and CRISPR gene-editing - and eventually uses Chimera material to re-create feature-complete humans and caprine, feline and saurian anthros. A little work gets him to figure out how Eiko Kazamatsuri managed to use Aspasia as a template for the Blue Chimeras while preserving and developing genetic diversity, and he eventually designs biomechanical systems designed to autonomously support Agnates in formation."
He sighs as he turns a few pages. "So on and so forth for ten, fiften thousand years or so and, well..."
The last book is then closed with a thud. "Marius Vlastos, the New Father of Mankind. For once, his Noise is quiet about these lifeforms' potential, seeing as he's overseen their development and taught them to teach one another what they'd need to survive in the wastelands outside. His Noise starts chattering about what's outside the solar system, about what could harm him and his creations that he hasn't had the time to forsee - but this particular version of Humanity doesn't trigger aversion or disgust in him. For once in what probably feels like an eternity, he's proud of someone else. Several someones. Enough so that he's called a few of them son or daughter - or even sired them as new vampires."
His smile turns into a slight grimace. "It's a fun read, but the recent past, present and immediate future make better thrillers if you ask me. You see Time the way I do, you learn to appreciate things as they happen."