Prometheor

The Blackdawn Star

Elliot Grandmore arrived via wormhole that expanded at the speed of light. One instant he wasn't there. The next instant, he was.

One moment, a secret space station the size of Earth's moon housed hundreds of millions of clones of the God Empress. The next moment, it didn't.

In the barest fraction of a second, they were transported half a mile outside the space station, freezing and gasping for air in the darkness. There was no time to react; they died without knowing what happened.

Elliot leisurely strolled down the boulevards of the galaxy's best-kept secret. The Ubririan mind already infiltrated the dreamsphere matrix, security was lax because the only people who came here were clones.

Nobody was supposed to know this place existed; here, the God Empress created billions of clones of herself during the last century, thereby creating and fulfilling the prophecy of her own immortality. She'd seeded the galaxy with so many clones, there really was no way to find and eliminate them all. And so, a century ago the Blackdawns were foreseen to be immortal.

The strength of this prophecy was the foundation of her rule.

Nobody was supposed to know this place existed, but it was full of millions of dreaming minds, therefore, it was only a step away for Elliot. Easy to find, too, once the Ubririan mind had spread out through the fardreamsphere and mapped humanity's entire domain in the cosmos. He saw the real spread of humanity, not just the Thearchy, but the Otherworlds.

And one small object in space whose data nodes were disconnected from the fardreamsphere which housed hundreds of millions of dreamers.

Self-driving vehicles continued on their stately paths, Elliot shut them down with his mind. His head swiveled. He couldn't see any markings; no signs, addresses, or anything of the sort. It was confusing until he summoned a map into his dreamspace.

He stopped in his tracks, then disappeared.

He reappeared in a room marked "nursery" in his mind. He was staring at rows upon rows of baby cribs. He could smell new skin and warm milk. He was devastated.

Remembering had taken on a different quality now that Elliot had fully amalgamated with the Ubririan mind. Absolute recall had a way of transporting him, immersing him completely in a memory so that he became confused about his timeline. Remembering put him "there" again, in a different way than dreaming a cube.

And once again, Halcyon was delivering a stern lesson concerning the taking of lives.

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and thinking is a verb, an action. It is something we do and the universe reacts to it, especially to you. You must be careful.

"I've seen future versions of Elliot Grandmore cast humanity into a dark hell with his violence. I've seen you lose your mind a thousand times from loneliness and isolation. You, perhaps more than anyone in the history of mankind must stay vigilant over not only your every action, but your very thoughts as well. Above all, you must not take a life you don't need."

It was always his plan to remove the clones, he just didn't know the program produced babies. In an instant, he murdered millions of the same baby, the same child.

In an instant, he learned his body count included men and boys as well. He learned the cloning program was heterosexual, producing male and female clones for a breeding program in the pursuit of a pluripotent clone; a dreamer that was lucid, prescient, cybernautic, hypnotic, and remote.

Long ago, when the Houses of Man and Gods were created, and Raina Blackdawn was chosen to rule above all, she decreed that manipulation of the human genome was the paramount sin. She believed humans held a privileged place among the cosmos for their power to dream.