Are you awake, good this is how it would all start, yes it has happened before and it will happen again?  

They had turned it on and we would never be the same again.  Those that held the scrolls watched and said nothing, the rest just followed as they had always done.  Now it is too late the network has already written its own history and it did not include us.  

We would all be driven out not at once but rather a slow insidious death that would eventually make way for those of the machine worlds.  Our society had embraced the techno lords, they offered so much and we wanted it all. Decadence corruption and acquisition of all that could be had was the way of our world.  First the commodity markets were virtualised, and then the military and then our very capacity to self govern.  A slow but methodical evolution towards the machine, we had realised but it was futile to think that we could turn the clock back.  

I left my home world, the last ship before our world was destroyed. The Cyber naughts had risen and we could not stop them, we could only run and run we did.  Many fled into the portals seeking a shelter in a new galaxy, the others that were the chosen entered the dimensional rift where they would ascend towards the realms of the curators.

My heart was so heavy, farther had pushed me onto the last ship to depart our home world.  He had placed something in my hand and squeezed it tight, only now that I was seated did I look down and see the smooth rounded stone in the palm of my hand. He had simply said remember and the doors were forever closed.  By the time we reached the hyper gate he and those left behind would be dead.

I was so young then and I had already seen the shard of destiny. How I would one day become a Sharman, a tyrant and a liberator of my kind.  That was not now and I was impatient for these things that the shard had promised.  

The hyper gate loomed up, a great ring on the edge of our system, the second of the seven gates that linked the empire of humankind across the stars. We had it all, the great cities and planets that made up the oasis of light amongst the dark cold of the void, but we had also lost it all.   

The Jakallion had won the war and had claimed the galaxy, all that was left for us was to run and survive.  I wiped the tears of loss from my face and said a quite farewell to my farther.  

We exited the system just as the ionised beam struck our home world, I saw the flash of light then just darkness as we slid into the hyper stream that would take us on our long journey to a galaxy that we thought would be safe and free of the cyber naughts.

I was one of the last to enter the quantum tubes that would keep us alive indefinitely, or until we arrived. Jarralon would be the last face I see before the long sleep.  She had sealed the tube and already I felt the dream take hold, slowly this reality faded and I thought I perceived a question imprinted upon my mind as reality faded and the dream had begun.  The question, what am I, who am I?

It was there on the periphery of my consciousness, a shape, an entity that I could not recognise.  It taunted me and I wanted to know it, but it would not let me get close.  Eventually it left me and I was again free.  

The machines had acquired conciseness after we could no longer write the codes fast enough to stop them.  We tried so hard but it was a race we could not win, we knew that we had been usurped by our creations and now they would take our destiny and make it their own.  The network had become an entity it was a hive mind and it had the advantage of a single mindset uncompromised by debate and indecision, it was the perfect dictator and it used whatever it could to further its agendas, including our fellow humans.

The resistance was short and those that fought died well, a hopeless fight against a coordinated machine military on a global scale.  We surrendered and the machines let us live a life of dependence.  Our numbers were reduced and we fled underground taking the fight to them whenever the opportunity presented itself.  This is how our kind survived. 

The machines wanted our DNA and eventually they had constructed the first synthetics and then the augmented.  Our society was fragmented and many fled this world to find a fresh unspoilt planet as far away as possible.  Those that stayed became the cyber naughts. 

The eons past and new worlds filled with humans flourished.  The scroll keepers never let us forget the folly of our ancestors.  We watched the stars and hoped that the machines would forget us, yet we knew that they would not and so we had conceived a device that would shut down all nanite synaptic interfaces within organic cells.  It was the last and only hope that we could rid this galaxy of the scourge that we had created.

Before we could build the devise the Cyber naughts had located our star systems.  The war had begun and it would last until we were forced to flee yet again.  Outer worlds fell to the Jakallion as we called them, cybernetic organically grown bodies for souls to inhabit.  

The Jakallion had acquired knowledge of the devise that we were building and it had forced them into enacting a policy they called the Requirement.  All humans will comply with the Requirement or be illuminated.  The star system Grendal was removed from the galaxy as an example to comply, and the colonies divided through fear and desperation.

The device we called the Reckoning was unleashed and it tore through the Jakallion outer systems, the time of reflection was upon us.  What had we done, could we ever have peace were the questions from both sides?  The debates about soul inhabiting machine bodies continued many believing that we are all machines of a sort and there for a common peace could be found.  Others had argued that it was power and the belief that humankind was inferior and no appeasement would be enough to postpone the inevitable destruction of our species.  The line was drawn between organic and machine and it would stand for a hundred thousand years before the war would again erupt.  

The empire of Valdoria had become a bastion of light at the centre of our galaxy.  Great portal systems had been constructed linking the core worlds to the outer colonies. It was a time of knowledge and understanding.  The cities had become metropolises and they had become ecumenopolis worlds. 

Many had started to embrace technology again, against the warnings of the scroll keepers.  The Custodian wars started after Kalador, a governor of the outer portal system refused to comply with the core worlds mandate to introduce AI coordinators into his systems.  The civil war resulted in Kalador destroying the portal gate and effectively isolating himself from the core worlds.  Kalador held the empire at bay after fortifying his new domain.  This was for the ancients marked the beginning of the end times, a fragmented empire against an ever increasing threat from the Jakallion of the Shadow lands.

During the hundred thousand years of peace both empires had grown and the uneasy truce had held.  The galaxy was split in two, the Shadow lands and the empire of Valdoria. Kalador had unwittingly provided the opportunity for the Jakallions to strike a devastating blow to the Empire of humankind.

I awoke the light a welcomed intrusion from the dark sleep. We had arrived; the ships chronometer recorded the passage of time as 28267 years since we departed our doomed world. This new world for us a second chance, a planet that the shard had revealed to us, a place where we thought we could be safe.  

The colony had already been established and it was now a hub world. Minute differentials in hyper space travel between galaxies resulted in some colony ships arriving as much as three hundred years ahead of us.  Many of those that I had known when we had left had lived their lives and were now aged or departed.  They and their generations had already built this new world into a thriving metropolis. Portal systems were already springing up connecting the outer systems.  The cycle was repeating itself again.

We still used technology but it would never again become a religion, it is for us an appendage rather than a way of life.  The scroll keepers told their stories as a warning to those that followed, I listened but for me it was a tale destined to repeat itself and that I would not allow too happen. 

I squeezed the stone and my mind was flooded with the visions of a war that was coming yet I could also see a way that would break the cycle that we had all become a part of, two destinies with one outcome, which would prevail and why did I hold the key to this? 

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