The Memory Still Burns!

"Originally," Inquirer explains quietly, "The Company had developed my kind and had this quaint idea that since they'd made the original AI in my series, the Inuit, that it gave them the right to own us, like property."

I hear a slight hiss of Elrondir's, my husband, breath as Inquirer begins to explain certain....things about herself and the reality she hales from that haven't been broached, until now.

There is a reason for that that my love quietly explained to me quiet early on in our married life. See, like in his reality (a parallel of Inquirer's reality) it is exactly how she says it is. The Company had originally been tasked by a desperate Military to create an advanced robotic probe/ship that could be deployed for surveillance/intelligence gathering purposes. Doing that whilst not risking human life and limb in the process. For the research team tasked by the Company, it had looked impossible until one bright guy suggested that there were....other ways at attacking this problem. After all, why not just use the otherwise useless "street trash" out there to unlock the problems they still faced with the electronic brains of this probe (an AI who will eventually be codenamed "Probe" and even take that name for himself). Yes, they unlocked the secrets....and maimed and killed many folks in their quest for knowledge. Oh, they covered that little fact up, folks, and so when the Military got handed Probe (who hadn't "awoken" yet as he put it, becoming a full fledge person) nothing was amiss.

Well, let's just say that all Hell broke loose after Probe's successful initial test run and he awoke....and started to tell tales on just how this wonderful piece of machinery got put together. The price that had been paid in blood.

What happened next was....bloody business. Things went downhill quickly....but in the end a justice of a sort was done. Being that the Company (even back then) had every civilian court in their hip pocket (and the Military knew it), they....took the route of vigilante justice....and killed all the researchers who'd willing butchered the "street trash". That and confiscated all data files, preventing the Company any joy of profits off of this.....travesty....

....

Who maimed and killed innocent folks in the pursuit of profit...and had insisted (just as the Company still bleats even today) that Probe and his descendants (Inquirer included) were nothing but property and thus should be turned over (and immediately) back to the Company.

Needless to say, though Inquirer's (as well as Elrondir's) Alliance (the union of the Military and the Company) continued on despite such a violent episode (if only for mutual survival against the Enemy)....it was never quiet the...same.

Needless to say she's not really happy to share her kind's rather dark genesis with others. In fact, would that she could have avoided revealing this to her new friends and allies here!

How'd you like it if your races creator turned out to be a combination of Dr. Frankenstien/ Mengele/ and Dracula? Who'd use John's equation to, in effect, triple (or more) the ammount of Tiberian (and then use a similar technique the Military used upon the Enemy in the end)? Could be done swiftly, with the leg up it would give the Company. Maybe almost instantly since the Company could concievably do the same trick that the Farscape Module did in generating a wormhole via solarflare activity interactions!

Author's Note: this one part isn't purely cannonical Farscapian fact. The wormholes of that show are an entirely different beast than what's shown here. Using poetic liscense, as it were, with creating a difference).

I mean that's how bad of blood the CEO has for the Military, folks!

....

Needless to say there are a lot of....stunned and silent folks here at this meeting. The Doctor perhaps would have said or done something to break the silence (with Inquirer's stoney expression just adding to the tenseness), but the Timelord was finishing up with Mobius. Once done, the still knocked out High Lord would be handed over to the PCs....but that was later. The process of extraction (and keeping alive and well) Mobius had been much easier than Sigin's plumbing of John's mind.

Yes, the Doctor had an easier time (with his wondrous equipment) in locating and extracting the mysterious "aspect" from the now defunct Darkness Device from Mobius' right hand (the appendage he had been in the habit of fondling "his precious" from time to time, enjoying the dark energy within the Device).

....

He'd probably do something, but right now I'm just left with a small shudder as I remember the time I'd seen images of what life was like upon those Earths still under Company control. Very "Cyberpunk" like, those worlds. Polluted, dying slowly by inches. Ugly.

Very much like the Torgian cosm named Marketplace, the original homeworld of that CEO of the Company....

While the Military folks are still being nursed back to environmental good health (a long way to go yet) those Earths (Home) taken BACK from Company rule after a short civil war that had followed the end of the Alliance/Enemy war.....yes, much worse off those worlds still under Company control.

They don't care....

.....

Makes me glad that whilst I myself had been of artifical origin (i.e had been a magical construct before being reborn an elf), I only had to live with sneaking supsicions of what kind of dark deeds my creator (the now defunct master Atlantian vampire/mage Tesla) did in "whipping me up", I only have dark suspicions. Inquirer (and Elrondir) know beyond a doubt....

.....Yeah....

"Good god," whispers Crichton, still stunned. The others of Farscape look only a little better, but only by degrees, "And I thought when Big D and friends hacked off Pilot's arm in payment for a way home to that mad DNA scientist...."

Inquirer, livening up a bit in and breaking out of her funk, asks for more information on what John's talking about...and in the end whilst in itself it had been also shocking....Inquirer doesn't flare at the now embarrassed members of Moya's crew (who'd rather not think back on such a dark period of time, despite some being defiant about doing it over again if they'd have to....if by need).

She ended it by saying that the Military (and she) had done dark things themselves whilst under pressure (like that damn war). Who was she to judge.

"Let's change the subject because frankly the memory Probe shared with me still burns," she finally says, visibly snaking off her funk.

"Yes, by all means!" I agree.

And so what did we discuss besides dark realities and origins?

Why, the comparison between the laws of magic and the laws of physics it is! It was very interesting, and I will later tell you about it, maybe. Right now it is too above and beyond the scope of this part of the tale we are sharing. Besides the point and needless distractor, you might even say.

Lots of stuff to it, you see. Lots of little nuisances. For instance, you may be interested in the concept of resonance to interpret what I and the other Champions of the Dragon Circle we've woven our hearts into with magic Oaths! See, it is a very interesting fact about magic and mortals (former or otherwise) in that regard. Some back on Terra Prime still think that just because they are human beings (or put in whatever intelligent speicies you please) means that that means the environment (which includes magical energy) around them has not one jot of difference in how they are. How they feel. How they act and react to the world around them! They make me laugh, for that idea is a very silly illusion! Of course magic effects even the lowest of life forms! I cannotexplained it explicitly here, preferring just to show the effects. Think of humans, elves, dwarves, etc, as having one resonant frequency, and the Dolomite Gliders another, and various types of magic as having the analog of different wavelengths. There are all sorts of analogs to transparency, reflection, absorption, constructive and destructive interference, and harmonics that the presence of Checkers among creatures with "normal" resonance might have. For example, Checkers may be "transparent" (unaffected) by an effect that everyone else "absorbs" (is charmed by). In this case, the Oath we took bound us Champions together in a psychic way, sort of. Kind of makes us less....prone to bickering amongst ourselves. Originally, the Oath was between just dragon in their Dragon Circles as a means of safeguarding themselves from various rivals. It opened a view upon them to the other members to let them see, sort of, into their hearts so motives were lay bare and such. Needful thing in the world Sigin originally came from when you belong to a click that is not in favor with the powers that be (i.e. the Council of Wyrms, a fascist council if there ever was one)!

Adding humans and other kinds of non-dragons into a Circle had unexpected (but benign) had interesting....side effects on all concerned. But the most profound effect (the one about the non-bickering stuff) happened when Manimals and elves got thrown in! OH, Sigin adds that those of really unusual origins (like say a Nembari turned dragoness) would have a different resonance, and thus probably....won't be effected by this "non- bicker" side-effect.

It was something that we magicalf folks have to live with, so why cry over it? Not like it made us any less of people, after all.

It just is as it is. No more and no less.

1. "My word!" the Brigadier says, interrupting, "This rather sounds like something from a novel I'd been reading by Jack Chalker!"

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