—. It’s all connected. — Echmann told them as he guided the group down the hallway to his makeshift boratory —. The quarantine of Lohengrin, the Phasmonates, the EREBUS failure, and, above all, the arrival of that ship, Ebisu. — Max let out a chuckle, incredulous. —. Impossible. — he replied, shaking his head —. No one can be decades ahead of an event, especially not the Nightflyers. — —. We thought the same. — Angelina stepped forward —. But when we gained access to the censored files of the colony, believe me, it all started to make perfect sense. — —. How so? — Naomi questioned him. They reached the door of the Medical Box at the barracks, where they stopped one by one as Echmann entered a password. —. Three months before we arrived, when the Chronos was still not fully stopped, the miners of Lohengrin found something. Ruins of the Farmers. — the doctor commented, in a somber tone. Naomi's eyes widened, and Max felt a chill run up his spine —. There, there was a star map, and other things. You’d better see it for yourselves. — as he entered the password, the doors opened before them. The only remnant of the sparse medical box was a stretcher and the emergency kits. However, the medical instructions and procedures on the walls had been repced by notes and research diagrams. Photographs of forensic files where the creatures were dissected and studied. Also, among all the scribbled notebooks, a codex, where the alien runes were noted, alongside their apparent meanings. When Max saw it, the diary seemed to call to him, and whispers echoed in his ears, repeating the instructions he perceived with increasing frequency. A sharp pain pierced his left eye to the cerebellum, and it felt like crashing into an invisible barrier. He held his face, massaging between his temples, as cold sweat broke out on his forehead. —. And that’s where they found the Phasmonates, right? — Max asked as he tried to sit up. —. More or less. — Echmann answered, while searching for something among his notes. Harding approached a transparent jar, and Satoshi watched him from behind. His fingers slid over the grip of the revolver. —. Is this one of them? — the chief asked in a low voice. Echmann turned, adjusting his gsses again, and nodded. —. That’s right, a perfectly preserved Phasmonate. –Born of the ghosts.– You can’t imagine the hassle it cost the Doctor Cortázar and me to get it. — he bragged —. Don’t worry, it’s dead and preserved in alcohol. It won’t jump into your mouth. — —. It looks small. — Satoshi commented. Max approached hesitantly, and as he moved forward, Naomi held onto his hand to come with him. Sarraf, in front of the door, crossed his arms, revealing the Reverse Field Device wrapped in his left hand. —. Actually, it’s a rva. — Sawatari expined. —. Calling it a rva is a misleading approximation, Sayuri. — Echmann corrected, as he approached the jar and bent down to take it in his hands —. This is the creature itself. Its real body. The rest is a shell. A false body. — A getinous and translucent mass floated inert, suspended in the alcohol. Out of the corner of his eye, its silhouette had a certain humanoid resembnce, which dissipated as soon as one focused on it. It looked like a bizarre cross between a jellyfish and a centipede, whose extremities were long fiments that extended like angel hair. Upon looking at the Phasmonate more closely, Max realized that the creature, with a bit of imagination, resembled a nervous system without a body, and without a brain. —. What do you mean by it being a false body? — Naomi asked him. —. As literal as it sounds. — Angelina replied. —. The creatures that appeared in the colony and aboard the Chronos are not aliens. They are crew members. — Echmann expined. —. Or rather, what’s left of them. — Padman corrected him. Max wrinkled his nose upon hearing it, pulling his gaze away from the creature. —. Come on, doc. You don’t believe the nonsense EREBUS says, do you? — Echmann simply adjusted his gsses with the palm of his hand. —. He’s not entirely wrong, hence the paradox. — he replied ambiguously —. What happens is that the Phasmonate, in principle, is a parasite. It enters the human body through the vocal tract, to lodge itself in the spinal cord. With its fiments, it takes control of the central nervous system of the host, and this becomes a puppet of the Phasmonate. For now, and in strict terms, we still have a human being present, but controlled. — —. That is until the changes happen. — Max observed. —. Which begin a few hours ter. — Echmann added —. I tried to heal some infected subjects. None of them ended well. Usually, they were branched throughout the body, and removal resulted in the death of the host. —The subject of the autopsy was Jacob Mullins, 33 biological years old, a Kugelblitz specialist in Engineering. Echmann and Cortázar made use of the morgue as the ship was slowly consumed by the light of the fireflies. Max knew it was him because attached to a withered hand was an analog wristwatch. The rest of the body belonged to a fairy, and part of its face had fused with the visage of the beast, opening a maw full of sharp teeth. — Poor bastard. — muttered Harding. — Mullins was no longer conscious when it happened. — warned Echmann, speeding up the footage of the autopsy projected from his HoloPad — We could say he was dead. — — But he wasn’t. — said Naomi. — Of course not. His organism was still alive, but everything that was not useful for the Phasmonate was discarded, like his personality, memories, everything that could be said was the soul of Engineer Jacob Mullins. Only useful information was preserved, like passwords and faces, as they were considered additional nutrient sources for the Phasmonate. — replied the doctor. Max felt a churn in his stomach — Just fifteen minutes after exposure, the cells, especially the stem cells, multiplied exponentially, initiating the creation of anomalous tissues. — — Cancer. — observed Satoshi. — Exactly. — Angelina agreed. — Only it is taken to another level. We are not talking about simple tumors, but new organs and limbs that compete and absorb the originals. Just as happens with the Reveiroia Ondatrae and the frogs it uses as hosts. — Echmann fully dispyed Mullins' body, and the result was horrific. Aside from the face subsumed in tissue along with a withered hand, it could hardly be said that this thing was, in fact, a human being — It is then that the body is assimited by a network of teratomas, seemingly random, that take the form of organs, limbs, and bones, but as the hours pass, they show a specific purpose within the ecology of the Phasmonates. But the principle is the same, to protect the true body through an organic shell that adapts according to function. — — My God. — whispered Harding. The st images of the colony testified to that. On the outside, nothing had changed, and a network of brutalist arcologies could be distinguished buried in the valley of Lerna. But inside, it was another story. Max could distinguish a shopping mall by a sign that protruded among the brown, viscous flesh. Whitish masses writhed like intestines through a shopping gallery, and the pce had transformed into a digestion zone. Not even corpses remained; they were dissolved or reincorporated as nutrients. Yakiv was right. The bodies were growing, and they were transforming into something else, just like what happened with Chronos. But something didn’t quite add up, and the illumination came with the fsh of the fireflies. — But they can’t just be simple parasites. — he commented, recalling the nightmares from weeks before arriving in Lohengrin — All those visions, the forest, the fireflies, our ghosts. It can’t just be collective hysteria. These creatures, the Phasmonates, must be intelligent to some extent. — — There’s no doubt about it. — added the doctor — But by themselves, they are not. In fact, each creature fulfills a specific function, but it could hardly be said that they are self-aware. They are flesh automatons, or at best, cells. — — Then something controls them. — Naomi commented. — A queen? — Harding asked — We were in the nest of those things, in the Air Filtration Towers. We didn’t see anything like that. — — There doesn’t necessarily have to be a queen to talk about a hive mind. — decred Angelina — That’s the dangerous thing about the Phasmonates. — — You see, what would happen if we took a group of people and asked them to act like neurons? Not literally, of course, but fulfilling a simir function. — Echmann let drop, while adjusting his gsses again and scratching his beard. No one responded — It is to be assumed that the collective could act like a brain. Now, could that brain made of people acquire self-awareness at some point? — the silence hit them like a tsunami, and the stunned faces remained staring at the doctor. Max swallowed hard at the idea, and Echmann could only let out a chuckle. — It’s what happens with the Phasmonates, but on a much rger scale. Each entity is carrying out tasks typical of a rger organism. Certain castes, like the Fairies and Goblins, defend the nest, others build it and take care of healing. Others produce new strains to deal with rger threats. It is safe to think that there are others that carry information, as neurons would. It is no longer a question, but a certainty that as a whole, the Phasmonates have acquired consciousness, and that consciousness is the Firefly Forest. —Max felt as if the room was starting to spin around him. He couldn't tell if it was the revetion, or if he had suddenly become aware of the Coriolis effect of the habitat. He leaned against Echmann's desk, and the runes in the notebook seemed to invite him to read. He looked away, and instead, the Phasmonate caught his attention, floating inside the jar. He was horrified to notice that, within his own flesh and bones, his nervous system was not very different from that of the creature. —. I still don't understand the visions. They don't seem to have a purpose. — Max remarked while wiping the sweat from his forehead. Naomi noticed that something was wrong and asked with her gaze if he was okay. The first officer simply nodded with his hands. —. Of course they do. — Echmann replied —. Expand the Forest of Fireflies. That's what Dr. Cortázar believed. They learn from us, but it's a one-sided process. Our "self" is incorporated into the hive mind, and our bodies are recycled as part of the organism. This creates a virtuous circle, speaking in scientific terms, of course. From a human perspective, it's horrible. But from a research standpoint, it's fascinating in a morbid sense. — Echmann seemed disgusted and embarrassed just to mention it. He lowered his gaze and waved a finger as if he wanted to continue the idea —. Dr. Zhang obtained a couple of interesting conclusions. — Upon leaving the makeshift boratory, Zhang took them to the Meeting Room, where she showed them her own research. In front of them, a mosaic of images of both Lohengrin and the Chronos over the days. Upon observing, they noticed that the advance of the Phasmonates had reached a critical point. On the sides, notes and graphs of a simution that Max did not understand at first, and hoped he never would. —. Until two days ago, there were some cndestine transmissions that bypassed the communication blockade. Very weak radio signals, the work of a miner named Pyotr Zhao. — a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and snted eyes appeared from time to time, filming himself, hidden among some maintenance grates, living in a wretched shelter with barely a bnket and a heater. To defend himself, a couple of fres, a shotgun with white phosphorus ammunition, and a tremendous contraption that Max deduced was an Antimatter Projector. —. I haven't seen any more colonists. I think I'm the only one. — he recounted in one of the st transmissions, with the fisheye lens distorting his face as he walked —. This used to be the Public Sector. — —. And where is Zhao now? — Satoshi asked. —. They ate him. — Angelina stated —. He was on his way to Oates Minerals. He thought it was safer. He said he would find someone. He never returned, but his camera continued transmitting from the Vertical Farms complex until a couple of hours ago. — but when she showed the images, there was no sign of human architecture. It simply disappeared. Instead, a mass of viscous brown flesh covered every corner, with structures forming stems and trunks, like sinister flesh trees that emitted pulses of yellowish light, like the creatures that wandered aimlessly, performing incomprehensible tasks. —. Zhao noted that the light pulses were not random. It seemed that the Forest of Fireflies was having some kind of activity. — Echmann indicated, and Angelina showed another mosaic of images. Luminous fiments were drawn in the fabric of the walls, as well as branches and organelles growing in the decaying colony, as if it were burning, as if there were fireflies under the membranes, eager to come out. —. When I analyzed the data, and viewed the colony from above, along with all the infected Lohengrin settlements, we concluded that the activity resembled a neural network. A very rge one. I ran a simution based on the experience of the Chronos, and together with the colony, that down there is performing work equivalent to 150 quantum supercomputers like ours. — Angelina turned to the group with a grim expression, and the cold, dim lights accentuated the folds and angles of her face —. In short, the Forest of Fireflies is a meat supercomputer. Nothing like anything we've seen before. — —. But that's not all. — Echmann added, and from the coffee table, he projected a star map of the inhabited space. The sor system at the center, along with Proxima Centauri, Epsilon Eridani, Lacaille 8760, and Gliese 667 —. Before departing to the Replicators with Daimonji, Cortázar enrged the simution, putting among the data the worst possible scenario. That is, that Chronos leaves the system with the pgue of the Phasmonates inside. — —. And for the sake of facilitating the simution, we will assume that the Lacaille 8760—Solsys route is closed, and Chronos is the only avaible propagation vector. The destination is as stiputed by the Guild in our current navigation chart. Phobos Station, sor system. — Max and the group watched as a yellow dot, the Chronos, left Lacaille 8760, while a blue globe indicated the years passing. It was like witnessing an inevitable final destination.—. If we are unable to contain the pgue of the Phasmonates, humanity in the sor system would have contact with them by the end of the year 2639. — expined Echmann. The point representing the sor system turned yellow, and quickly zoomed in, now showing Mars. Max felt his stomach tighten, and Naomi couldn't take her eyes off what could happen. —. We will take as a reference the speed of contagion that occurred in Lohengrin, whose popution was 0.0002% that of Mars. Assuming that the security and defense systems are overcome as happened in Lacaille 8760, and taking into account the higher popution density, the pnet could suffer a catastrophic global contagion in two weeks. — continued Angelina. The mere thought of it was horrible. Centuries of terraforming and resilience, thrown away. Their dream was turning into a nightmare, and Max and Naomi could only watch as it happened —. Organized resistance efforts could hold out one to two years at most before colpsing, but even before this point, contagion throughout the sor system is inevitable. — And that's how it would happen. No one would want to stay on Mars when the situation became unviable. Scenarios like the boarding of the Chronos would repeat thousands of times, and the Phasmonates would manage to get on board. Intrasystem transport ships would have turned into death freighters as they reached their destination. The most logical thing would be to destroy them, but humans are stubborn and would try to see some glimmer of hope. In trying to save lives, millions would be lost, and then the spaceports would be invaded by hordes of living tumors, moaning in agonizing and voracious hunger, consuming everything in their path. Extending their tendrils. Devouring, assimiting, and recombining. Every human being scattered throughout the sor system would become less than a sack of meat for the beasts, all to satisfy a hunger that was impossible to quench. A growth that was impossible to stop. Memories, recollections, experiences, reduced to inputs for the Forest of Fireflies, learning from their prey to break their defenses. Antimatter warheads? Gauss cannons? Bck Shadow battalions? Drones and endless fleets prepared for a resistance? It didn't matter, for humanity would end up hiding like rats in the ruins of its own decay, returning to its most basic needs. Eating to avoid being eaten. For every fallen bastion, humanity would lose ground, and would ultimately be completely consumed. Evacuating would be useless, as the rest of the systems would be doomed, and the scenario would repeat itself. The end was bitter and inevitable: absolute assimition. The Rascaestrels themselves would end up carrying the seeds of the abyss. —. The simution concludes that by the middle of the year 3746, humanity would have been completely assimited, assuming that survivors tried to take refuge in uninhabited systems, but that the Phasmonates would end up arriving anyway. — Angelina said, putting the nail in the coffin. Those present felt they were witnessing the future funeral of humanity —. And this is where it gets interesting. The neuronal activity of the Forest of Fireflies still exists, but on a rger scale. — —. And what about the speed of light? — Harding asked. —. It still exists. — Padman replied —. It is an insurmountable limit, even for these things. — —. Which, ultimately, doesn't matter to them. At least in the simution. — commented Echmann —. For every system assimited into the Forest of Fireflies now behaves like an individual neuron. — the simution increased speed as the years passed, and the activity increasingly resembled that recorded in Lohengrin and Chronos. The Forest of Fireflies was thinking, reflecting, pnning, at a very slow speed, but it was doing so nonetheless —. And it gets worse. — the hologram zoomed out to encompass the Milky Way completely, and then Max felt he was on the edge of the abyss, teetering on a tightrope towards an endless fall. —. Whether we are the first contact, or just one of them, is completely irrelevant. Assuming we are, that there are 300 million habitable worlds in the Milky Way, a scenario of total assimition could occur in about 15,000 years. — Angelina recounted, as the years passed in seconds on the gaxy diagram, which gradually turned yellow, like a voracious oil stain spilled —. Of course, if we consider that the Drake equation is correct, and that there are at least 10 Type II civilizations capable of interstelr travel, which would end up spreading the pgue. — —. From that point on, every existing or potentially existing form of life would become part of the Forest of Fireflies. — the Milky Way turned completely yellow, and the simution flickered in rhythmic patterns over the centuries that passed like seconds —. As can be seen, the neuronal activity continues, at a slow but steady pace. What the hive mind might think are mere assumptions. But one thing is certain. We would be in the presence of the rgest organism known in history, one that encompasses an entire gaxy. It would be the closest thing to a god. —Max smmed his fists on the table as he stood up. The stunned gazes were fixed on him while the First Officer struggled to find words for the horror unfolding before them. But no matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find them. Not only was the crew and humanity in danger, but also the known universe. Life that might never even emerge from the primordial soup of some remote system would be doomed to become fodder for the Phasmonates. He had never felt so small. Any worry and apprehension seemed minuscule. If he wanted to give Lay, humanity, and life in general a future, they had to do something, and it was overdue, perhaps millions of years ago. — We have to stop those things. — he found himself saying. Naomi's eyes seemed to ask him, How? And it was true. He didn't have the answer, but they were against the clock and had to find it — The Phasmonates were in the ruins, right? There must have been eggs or containers with the creatures inside. It has to be crawling with them. I say we go back to the bridge, set the Chronos on a collision course with the ruins, and leave not even ashes. — — Even if we do, we won't stop them. — Padman mented. — Why not? — — Because the Phasmonates emerged from the Tree of Life. — Without fully understanding it, the revetion hit him like a punch to the gut, and the cold fell over his body like a shroud. — How? — — That structure is a gigantic Replicator, a technology that eludes us, as it has the ability to create life from nothing. — Echmann recounted, while Max, defeated, slumped into his seat — Patient zero, an Exoarchaeologist named Dae-Hun Nae, managed to activate it, killing his team and introducing their remains as inputs for the Tree of Life. That's where it all began. — — And that's what they tried to do with the Replicators aboard the ship. — Sawatari indicated in a low voice — The surgeon Jonathan Mentzer began to see symbols in the nightmares of the forest. He understood they were instructions, and Zalman Hayati from Engineering conceived a series of pns to modify the replicators. — — I see them too. — Max confessed, horrified by the revetion, feeling he was stumbling on the tightrope where his sanity was banced — That's what the fireflies were asking me. It was to transform the Chronos into a Tree of Life and have an infinite supply of Phasmonates. — — Which would be our doom. — Harding pointed out — Damn. Shit. Motherfucker. — — All the more reason we have to destroy those ruins. — Max stood up, and his gaze settled on Echmann — It doesn't matter if we don't survive; humanity, and those waiting for us in the sor system will. We would have killed two birds with one stone, the Phasmonates and the Tree of Life. — The doctor only smiled sadly as he adjusted his gsses once more. — Quite commendable, Max. But it wouldn't do much good. This Tree of Life is not the only one the farmers built. And Ebisu knew it. — — What? — Max shook his head — No, it's impossible. The speed of light is an insurmountable barrier. And even if they did, Ebisu would have had to get ahead by decades, or even a century. — — It's not necessary. — The Doctor crified. Angelina took his pce. — Max, do you remember that Echmann mentioned a Star Map? — — Yes. — Max replied. He opened his mouth to ask when he suddenly realized. His face paled as his shoulders slumped along with his gaze — It's the location of other Trees of Life, isn't it? — Angelina nodded. — Exactly. And the Orion Arm is crawling with them. Earth, the sor system, and the entire local neighborhood are in the middle of a ticking time bomb. — — And apparently, it knew long before we did. — And at that moment, Max felt his chest tighten, for he knew what Echmann was talking about. A legend, as well as a statistic of unresolved space disasters — You've heard about the Mjolnir expedition, right? — — Yes. — Naomi said — It was one of the most modern Starscrapers. It set off to Wolf 1453 with a colony of 50,000 people. Forty years ter, there was no trace of it, as if space had swallowed it whole. It was never known what happened. — — What if I told you that Wolf 1453 appears on the Farmers' Star Map? — — Are you saying that Mjolnir found the Phasmonates first? — Max leaned forward, and Echmann shrugged. — With a Tree of Life, that's for sure. And if they managed to get it running, contact with the Phasmonates is a certainty. — Echmann indicated, showing a star map of explored space — It's logical that someone we don't know, and very powerful, learned of the existence of the Tree of Life and the Phasmonates. They embarked on an expedition to clean up the disaster that occurred at Wolf 1453, or perhaps to prevent it. We are right in the middle, and given how things are going, Lohengrin and Chronos are mere colteral damage. — And with that, Max had never felt so insignificant. He wanted to seek answers. — What would Matkovich do in my pce? — he thought to himself. — Nothing. — his subconscious replied — It's over. There's nothing we can do. — But the voice of the old man in the recesses of his mind, along with the screams of the aberration the captain had become, kept insisting. — You must take charge. — it ordered him. — How? — But the captain did not respond, and only the roars of the Guardian appeared in his pce. A reminder of the threat that tormented them and from which there was no escape. Neither for them nor for humanity.