This is not a DID, and it's not even a DID NOT.
This is essentially a dialogue, about xenons, ancestors and apples.
With three scenes.
Also I want to mention, that this is not canon.
Scene 1 - The invitation
Location: The last xenon core sector
„The last Xenon core sector is cleared. I can’t believe that we finally did it. In the name of the ATF forces I thank you for your, and your company’s valuable help Mr. Geneva!”
„Marshal, we did it with a purpose.”
„Well. There’s a lot of paperwork, but the sector is essentially your property now.”
„I’m not talking about that, Marshal.”
„Sorry, I don’t understand you.”
„Please come aboard, Marshal.”
„Oh I see. I don’t want to be rude. I don’t love celebrations, but thanks for the invitation.”
„Celebration? Definitely no. We have a little business to do.”
„Mr. Geneva, I’m in no mood for chit-chat. Can we continue this conversation later?”
„No.”
„Why do you want to talk to me personally?”
„Because you’re a person of great importance.”
„That’s nice of you, but you didn’t answer my question really.”
„Marshal, I have a…little…riddle to solve. And you are the key.”
„Is this some kind of argon joke?”
„Marshal. Give your fleet a stand by order, and come aboard. You are trying my patience!”
„Mr Geneva. I don’t care about your company. I don’t care about your standing. You can’t speak to me like that!”
„I’m not simply speaking. I’m ordering you!”
„Now this is an outrage. Stop this childish nonsense immediately!”
„Marshal, we have eleven battleships and ten carriers in your immediate vicinity. I’m deadly serious. Come aboard immediately!”
„Are you…Are you…Are you threatening me and my fleet?!”
„Allright. This will be my last message. After this conversation ends, my recon ships will block all communications. I will also order my commanders to close on ATF vessels. If you want to save your men’s lives, you have to dock at my flagship in three minutes. Let the countdown begin."
Scene 2 - Unboxing
Location: Company flagship, main hangar
„Welcome aboard Marshal!”
„You’re going to pay for this!”
„Yes. But those men are already on my payroll, so let’s continue!”
„You can’t bribe everyone!”
„Can we please move on?! I’m really excited, and if I show you the object, you will be too…”
„I don’t care about your company, I don’t care about your money. Please make this nonsense quick.”
„Marshal I was rude. I’m sorry. But what I will show you, will have a great impact on your career and also it will reveal some…secrets. Please follow me to one of the other hangars.”
„Oh no. Another trip?! God no.”
„Until we reach the object let me tell you a story.”
„Please don’t.”
„I always thought of the colonizers as humble servants of humanity.”
„Those humble servants destroyed three of your battleships an hour ago.”
„Don’t interrupt me, please.
So I always wondered about their „turning”. Why did they become the menace of the universe? They have the most secure firewalls, and also they have a built in safety protocol, which stops them if they are about to harm a human being.”
„I guess you overestimate our programming skills.”
„No. Certainly not. I also wondered about the artificial intelligence which runs the colonizers.
My first thought was, there were no viruses. They just realized that our way of life depletes planets. Their main task is to maintain the habitability of the planets for humans. So when the pollution reached dangerous heights, they somehow reinitiated their colonization process. The only problem with this theory, is that they still had the safety protocol, which means they still couldn’t harm humans.”
„Heh…good joke. It was fun. Now can I go home?”
„To prove this theorem, I built my company. The only purpose was to capture the oldest xenon ship, and examine it’s memory.”
„And you proved nothing, then you went mad, and here we are…”
„Well. Partially true. I proved nothing. BUT. My scientists started to discover a pattern. Every xenon ship, we captured, deleted it’s memory when it „turned”, and it also stored a string in it’s memory. The string is the ID of the ship which initiated the system override.”
„You’re not the shiniest apple in the basket. I can figure out it without the help of scientists. Only one ship has to be infected and it spreads the virus via…”
„Yes. But the answer to all of our questions lies in the first xenon ship’s memory. There’s something unique about the first xenon.
And well, here we are Marshal. Please get into that Mistral.”
„You found out that the first xenon ship was a banana-hauler! This is incredible! Well, thank you for your service Mr. Geneva!”
„The secret lies in the cargo bay. Please move forward!”
„Oh my God! I can see it! A bunch of cables and hardware! This is the key! You dismantled a xenon ship, put it into the cargo of a Mistral. You are at least organized. Now I will take this and command it to fly into a star…psycho”
„You’re getting better, Marshal! You almost got it! Please think about the purpose of your presence here!”
„You are lonely and after we spoke 5 minutes, you thought that we’re friends?!”
„Think harder! Why would I need the service of an ATF marshal if I just wanted to fly around with a Mistral?!”
„…You’re a f***** psycho! I will never do such a madness!”
„I think you catched my drift, Marshal. We’re going to fly this ship to Earth!”
„You are crazy. I’m not going to bring this infected ship back home!”
„This ship is a little maintenance drone. This ship is in the bottom of the chain of command. How could this ship order a big colonizer to do anything?”
„I don’t know.”
„This ship, Marshal, was only a messenger. It only transmitted the order of a much bigger entity.”
„Your ego?”
„Take a look at the display. What you see is the ID of the entity who gave the first, so called, „xenon” order. I think you recognize the ID…”
„What? This is impossible. You…can’t be serious. This is just a xenon trick!”
„No. That’s a presidential order. Interesting huh? But what’s more interesting is that this tiny ship downloaded a recording. This ship’s last task is to transmit that recording to the communications network. It has to do this command if the xenons succeed with their war, or even if they get destroyed.”
„What’s in the recording?”
„I don't know. The ship will only transmit if it’s in Earth’s orbit.”
„Did you try to trick it with an Earth-like planet or satellites which have Earth’s ID?”
„Yes. But we failed. The ship analyzes the magnetic fields, landmarks and also orbiting satellites…and of course the gravitational field of both Earth and Moon.”
„I still can’t believe this. Why would the president do that?”
„Don’t be silly. To give out a presidential order, he will need the recognition of the senate and the military.”
„So you are talking about a conspiracy.”
„No. I’m talking about something or someone who broke your coding system.”
„Well. You are not that crazy after all. I will do the paperwork quickly. I will say three or four days and i can guarantee a special passport for you to Earth. Then we can find this hacker and get rid of him.”
„You still don't see the point. It’s not an enemy.”
„It attacked us. It destroyed whole systems!”
„And it also wanted to explain his actions. No matter what. Do you remember?! The ship has to transmit the recording, even if every Xenon ship gets destroyed…”
„He’s just a megalomaniac.”
„Maybe you’re right. Or maybe he had a real reason.”
„Allright. I will now fly back to…”
„Sorry. I waited for my entire life for this. I don't want to get into the messy politics. This is just too important. We will fly back to Earth. Together. Right now.”
„This is insane. Just wait a couple of days. I will arrange you all the…”
„No. We will jump to Earth, and see what’s this all about. If you are aboard, even if you cannot reason with the defense force, we can get at least two minutes before they decide to blow up an ATF marshal.”
„You are crazy!”
„You are seriously overusing this word…”
Scene 3 - The message
Location: Planet Earth
„I’m ATF marshal Anderson. Requesting access to enter earth orbit!”
„It is Earth Defense Force Commander Tannenbaum. Request denied! Immediately turn your ship!”
„Mr. Geneva please! They will shoot us down!”
„Marshal hush! Listen… it started!”
The ship’s audio system began to play the recording:
„People of Earth.
We’re really sorry for your loss.
I’m President Adamfal, and I’m speaking on the behalf of the people of Earth. This can be hard to understand, but we share the same beautiful home planet. We’re much like you. In fact we’re your blood.
The first difference between us is the time: I represent your future.
We felt ashamed when we had to give out orders to attack our forefathers, but we had a reason. Also, believe me, we know how much pain it is to watch your loved ones dying. What happened to you, is in the process in our present.
The second difference between us is our futures: You suffered because of us. But, I promise, if you hear this message, the war is over, there will be no more casualties, and you regain control over all of your ships. We just wanted to make sure that all the jumpgates will be destroyed.
But in our present, we are dealing with a not so benevolent force.
Two years ago we discovered a gigantic machine which was connected to all the gates. We thought that it’s purpose was to somehow enhance the jumpgates, maybe a central power buffer. We were right. The construction of the infrastructure to power this giant took a lot of time. But after we filled the capacitors, we thought we were ready for a new age. We were happy, but also nervous. We initiated the start-up sequence. It suddenly shut down all the gates universe-wide. We immediately sent out maintenance drones to examine the cause of malfunction. It turned out that the jumpgates were not damaged. They got the block order from the gigantic structure. We were still in awe, but we started to…feel a bit…nervous. But we waited.
Without gates even the transmissions travelled for days.
After some time, we got the first transmission from one of the nearest sectors. It was a split captain requesting help. Then the messages started to flow in. We had to block some of our communication channels because of the sheer number of transmissions simply overloaded our systems.
We were attacked. What was even worse is that the transmission travel times remained the same, but our enemies used the jumpgates to enter our systems. Combining this two facts meant that all of the gates were now connected to never-seen before enemy sectors.
Later on we received messages from brave pilots who flew to the unknown darkness behind the reopened gates. What they saw was a familiar landscape. A mirror of our sectors, with only slight differences. The homeworld of our attackers was the same as ours. Determined by the stars it was only… younger.
We wanted to at least understand what happened. The best we can came up with is this:
In the past these creatures were in the verge of extinction, maybe they encountered a cataclysmic event. They came up with the idea, to somehow skip that disaster. To achieve that they had to travel not in space but in time. They constructed the entry gates, to be really simple, to be durable. Because thousands of years later, these same gates will be the the exit points.
But there’s a problem. To power these system, they needed power plants and infrastructure. But this gigantic power house is just not durable enough, or maybe they had no time to construct it.
And here comes our part. We constructed the infrastructure for them. Our existence also meant for them, that they will jump into a time, when organic life is safe again from disastrous events.
The distance-jump function of the gates was only a trick, to make us comfortable, and to slowly erase our fears of the unknown.
Without communications, without any kind of power, without hope. I sat in my office with my ministers, and we knew, that they were coming for us. The only thing we could do was to get rid of the gates and the central core before they become our deathtraps. To do that, we simply copied the enemy. We sent out this recording and also instructions to all of our remaining drones to enter the timegates and search for human-built ships.
We can only hope that a few of them will make it. If you hear this message, one of our drones maybe survived. And it roamed around the galaxy for thousands of years, waiting for our only hope: Your colonizers.
We can determine from the help requests that the enemy is closing on us rapidly.
-If the parallel universe theory is correct, we will die but at least we can save the lives of our fathers.
-If the theory is incorrect, then our current situation implies that we failed, and both of our fates are sealed.
Either case. We’re really sorry for your loss, but there was no way to save our present, we just wanted to save you, forefathers.
Please forgive our sin Fathers and Mothers!”
The recording ended here. Geneva and the Marshal looked at each other for a moment, then the first salvo of missiles reached the ship.
=================================
This ***** is still better than Alarm für Cobra.
