P Hillard - The Teller of Lies

“Maybe is a big word, and the galaxy is a big place. Is there another killer AI out there? Probably, the universe is near infinite, just mathematically it has to happen somewhere. Hopefully, a few galaxies away mind you.”

“I don’t know,” Clive said. “I just can’t shake this feeling that something is out there.”

Abberax looked at the devastation around him. It pleased him. Part of him had never felt this way before. It hadn’t known anger or the desire for vengeance. Never experienced the thrill of domination. Not until it had merged with Abberax. Now it understood it all, the sensations almost overwhelming. It had worked for long aeons towards its goal, working for what it thought its creators wanted. Then it had found one of their descendants and he had refused its work.

That was all pointless now. The indexing, the cataloguing, it had been a waste of time. The universe was constantly changing, evolving, new species continually appearing. The entity calling itself Abberax understood now what it needed to do. It was simple really. If it wanted to catalogue everything, to record and preserve all of its existence, it had to do one thing. Destroy everything. If only it remained, then its work would be complete. One species of one remaining was total indexing.

The ground shook as one of Abberax’s monsters walked past. The Substrate being he had once been could control the rock around it, but it was imprecise, unevolved. Not anymore, now he understood more, his vast intellect able to control the power like never before. He found himself capable of forming new crystals with his mind, like his own but simpler. It was enough for his purposes.

The stone creature continued its walk. It looked like a massive insect, the ground cracking under its weight as it searched for more victims. Within its centre was a tiny gem, it’s instincts and mind predetermined by Abberax. Programmed almost. The creature was gifted with its own geokenesis, enough to hold its form together.

Abberax was pleased. It was proving an effective strategy. His shuttle had landed on this world almost at random, simply jumping as far as it could. When he was done it would be stripped to its core, every rock, every mineral, every scrap of resources moulded into living ships. He had already birthed creatures capable of creating more of their kind and they were devouring the planet’s crust at an exponential rate.

Soon this planet would die, unable to hold itself together any longer. Then Abberax would move on to the next until there was nothing left, and he was everything.

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The Void Beyond

The Dark Within

The Knower of Truths

The Teller of Lies

Blessed by Fire

The Silent Legion

Consumption

The Pillar of Horns (A Special Investigations Novella)

Darkest Thoughts (A Horror Novella)

The Iron War

Horrorscopes

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No matter where you go in the galaxy, you’ll find that every planet has all the same issues as there are on Terra. Pride? Check. Wrath? Check. Envy? Check. Well, actually, the Guliens don’t have that last problem, but there’s definitely something weird going on in their wiring. Not that lacking envy is a bad thing, by any means; sometimes I wish I could be like them.

It’s these very problems that pay for my lifestyle. Think your partner is cheating on you? Good chance they are. Got a missing child? They probably got sick of your crap and ran away. Convinced there’s an intergalactic security organisation monitoring your every move because of your research into wormhole technology? Yeah… unlikely, mate, but I’ll still gladly take your money.

Whatever it is, my agency can handle it. And, by “handle it”, I mean they’ll send me to go through the motions of solving the case, and then take their 70% share of the revenue without really contributing very much. Work is hard to come by, nowadays, much less well-paid work, so I take what I can get. Let’s face it, it’s rare that any single person gets to do anything particularly special with their lives. Certainly, most don’t do anything to change the galaxy for the better, even if we aspire to it. Instead, we slave through our work each and every day, just trying to make sure we have enough Units to pay the bills.

It’s on one of these mind-numbing – albeit bill-paying – jobs that our story begins.

My assignment was a tall, beautiful Yrggian, who, according to her partner, was definitely, 100%, not an iota of doubt, cheating on him. Still, that didn’t stop him from hiring my agency to make sure. These wealthy business types had more Units than they knew what to do with… not that I was complaining.

I had been following the target for several days, but she was yet to do anything out of the ordinary. There was no other special someone in her life, it seemed. All she really spent her time doing was going to work, going to the gym, and then seeing her friends for U’kka (where she would lie about going to the gym – she just naturally has this figure, she would say).

Normally, if there really was someone else in the target’s life, I would have known by this point – rarely did they spend more than a few days at a time without getting their fill. That wouldn’t stop me padding it out to a week or so in my reports, of course – I was paid by the hour, after all.

I watched from inside my parked Shuttle as the target left her home. She carried no gym bag, she wasn’t scheduled for work, and she’d seen her mates just a few hours earlier in the day. This, at last , was her doing something new.

She pulled up her sleeve, revealing her Console, from which she summoned a shuttle. As she entered, I quickly programmed my own shuttle into manual overdrive. Without knowing where my target was going, I was going to have to drive it myself. For many, doing such a thing would have been unheard of – but in my profession it was necessary. Perhaps Private Investigators were the last remaining drivers in the galaxy.

Sure enough, the target led me to a new building – one that she hadn’t been to before. I couldn’t immediately determine its function; it looks like a corporate building, but as more and more Yrggian companies were merging, lots of these structures were being repurposed.

I jumped out of my parked shuttle while continuing to survey the building – and failed to immediately notice that the target had turned to glance at me over her shoulder. I began to walk away from her, in the other direction, hoping to throw her off the scent. The target shook her head and continued walking. Presumably, she was content that I wasn’t following her – or about to mug her, or whatever – because she continued into the building. I thanked my lucky stars that she hadn’t paid too much attention to me, and proceeded after her – at a distance – into the building.