Spacefaring
they might have been, but the Swarm fell well short of the god-like harbingers
of doom our morose imagination foretold. When it came to the innate capacity
for destruction, we were evenly matched.
Billions
died still. On Earth and Mars, in circum-lunar space and the Asteroid Belt
maze, and as far away as Jupiter’s orbital distilleries.
Skirmishes
continued in the inner system, but with its surface-dwelling population
obliterated, Earth had to be abandoned. We fled in the face of their slaughter,
interminably shifting the theater of war outwards.
We
resolved to return, eventually; once the Swarm accepted the high cost of
subduing humanity, and moved on to other prey. We never entertained that we
might win outright. Not in the face of such a foe.
Aside
from the vector they arrived on from deep interstellar space, we knew little of
the Swarm’s origins. Whether they were the creation of organic lifeforms in a
distant cradle, or the product of a hitherto unknown mechanical evolutionary
pathway, we had no idea.
We
sent emissaries to their doom, fruitlessly seeking diplomatic discourse. Once
it became clear the Swarm had no interest in negotiations, humanity’s factions
coalesced into one, to repel the invading fleet.
Heroics
aside, however, we marched inexorably towards defeat, and with it, certain
extinction. Humans took the better part of a quarter-century to be made
combat-ready, only to perish in an instant. While the Swarm’s capacity to
respawn was limited only by its access to raw materials.
We
mourned. We schemed. We evolved.
We
bent our all to the war we had to survive.
Genetically
specialized embryos underwent en masse accelerated gestation and maturity. From
fertilization to puberty, in thirty days flat. Neural imprinting onto a common
topology produced waves of combat-ready warriors, each wave iteratively
superior to its predecessor.
For
a spell, we gained while the Swarm ceded, but it was a fleeting reprieve.
From
vulnerability to hard radiation, to inability to withstand excessive
acceleration, to dependence on tenuous supply chains for air, water and food,
our very biology emerged as our ultimate Achilles Heel.
The
Swarm irradiated our ships, forced every skirmish into a series of hairpin
maneuvers, and stretched our supply lines to breaking point; doggedly regaining
strategic superiority.
It
took us centuries more, but we adapted, again. Unflinchingly.
Bionic
supplemented organic, then supplanted it. What use were legs when locomotion became
propulsive? What purpose did eyes serve, when combat demanded full spectral
awareness? What hope did limbs, and faces, and beating hearts have, when
necessity demanded only shielded receptacles of reproducible decision making?
We
forsook who we were, one trait at a time, until all that remained of our
humanity was our ego, becoming a swarm of our own. Only more efficient, more
ruthless, and more expendable, for we yet commanded vast resources, and–for a season–the
precious few baseline humans capable of invention and creation to deploy them.
The
tide turned in our favor once more.
Our
hordes of mass-produced, solid-state warriors suffered no dread, harbored no dreams,
and nursed no hopes. They needed none, for none survived their first encounter
with the enemy. Our purposeful evolution in the name of survival had only made
us more adept at dying.
Mission
success came to be measured by the relative cost of enemy losses exacted for
each loss of our own. The tides of war turned, not on whose was the greater determination,
courage, or conviction, but by minute statistical fluctuations in rates of
attrition.
It
would have taken millennia, and fleeting human consciousnesses more numerous
than the Milky Way stars, but we would yet beat the Swarm’s superior numbers.
We
would prevail. We would survive.
The
Swarm pressed its final advantage, wiping out what precious few nests of baseline
humanity we thought we had secreted beyond their reach. In one fell swoop, they
severed the slender thread to what we once were. All we had left were the
memories.
We
vowed to keep on remembering.
Once
the existential threat that the Swarm posed had passed–and surely it would,
now that we had become a more ruthless version of our enemy–we would return.
We would rediscover our forms, and our thoughts, and reignite the flame of our
imagination.
It
was only then, that the Swarm deigned to speak to us. They told us, at last,
why they had come to Earth.
At
a time when our multi-cellular ancestors were yet to emerge from the primordial
soup, the Swarm faced their own existential threat, at the hands of a forgotten
foe.
They
shed their vulnerabilities, one by one, in the name of survival, never
suspecting that each imperfection was a cornerstone of their identity.
They
survived, but the path back proved more arduous than the one forward.
One
crisis followed another, each demanding more from them, while taking them
further away from what they once were. Until they could no longer remember what
that was. Surviving existential threats became the sole purpose that remained,
and when there were no perils left to overcome, they sought them out, far
beyond what was once their home.
They
became nomads, roaming the galaxy not for resources, or conquest, or even their
lost dreams, but for the only raison d’être they had left.
The
Swarm gave us a choice, now that we had proven ourselves ever so slightly their
better. They could grind on, whittling us down, in a war stretching for eons
between almost perfectly matched adversaries. A war, they would eventually lose,
they knew, but so would we.
For
absent all the folly and frailty that made us human, how would the few that remained
after the war destroyed the rest continue on surviving?
Having
offered it all on the altar of survival, what other option remained then but to
survive?
We abandoned our cradle, and all memories of our identity, enriching our enemy with the dregs that remained from our dreams. We joined the Swarm, swelling their ranks with our tribute.
~
Bio:
Ramez Yoakeim’s academic research once involved engineering perfectly believable details out of nothing. Fiction seemed like the obvious next step. At one time or another an engineer, educator, and entrepreneur, these days Ramez devotes himself to charting humanity’s future, one tale at a time. Find out more about Ramez and his work at yoakeim.com.
Speculative engineering shakes things up in the ancient world, by Austin Scarberry.
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