Denouement lore: Part one – The Iterations.

In an act of pure hubris, the likes of which the Internet has not before seen, I am now going to break down the lore of my own fiction, the Denouement literary universe.

Denouement is available now on amazon in both digital and print. 

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead.

With this warning behind us, I present to you the spoiler filled, totally unravelled first part of Denouement Lore. We begin with the pre-event timeline…

The universe, as presented at the beginning of the first novel, is the one in which all the below events happen. It is, as far as you need to be concerned, the final version of events.

They happened, exactly as described, but were then rewritten. They must have happened though, because if they did not, then the entity that re-wrote reality would not exist.

Boiled down to its barest version, the story is this: A small team of revolutionaries harnessed the power of a genetically engineered race of beings called Blades, to re-write the entire of reality. As much as this seems extreme, they were living in something of a hellscape that was, at best, heading for oblivion anyway.

A single woman named Aygah was eventually put in charge of crafting all of reality for the good of all. This is the story of how this happened and how we arrived at the outcome we experience in the current continuity of the Denouement universe.

We begin with the events of the first iteration of reality.

The first iteration of reality is one of the most complete histories that we have. All iterations that followed were short-lived and often total resets.

THE FIRST ITERATION

Many of the historical people in the first iteration were “saved” by Aygah and brought back in later iteration. This is something of a “reward” from their point of view, but from Aygah’s point of view, it was a case of having reliable variables. If you managed to be a decent person in the first iteration, then the rest of reality was on easy mode for you.

Vampires, Elves, Bricks and Humans came to be known as the Major races (in current Iteration the term “Elder” was popularised) because they had independently mastered galactic scale travel when they encountered each other.

In the first iteration, humanity had a major advantage over the other races in that they had no natural lifespan. The race, by all that is known, was not just long-lived but functionally immortal.

They were still quite able to die of illnesses or be killed by mostly the same as any other species but. Once they reached puberty, their body would maintain itself, they would simply stay young and healthy forever, baring intervention or sickness.

The Human race used this gift to become the wisest and most well-educated race in the galaxy. They simply outpaced the other races by virtue of lifespan.

Because of this, humanity was the first major race to enter the galactic stage. They invented faster than light travel and began colonising the universe in the mid 1800’s according to what is known.

Humanity mined and harvested entire sectors of space, constantly feeding wealth back to the core colonies and Earth. They colonised all local planets and spread out towards the galactic rim.

First contact with alien races happened shortly after they began this expanse. Humanity simply lacked interest in what they began referring to as younger races. They had nothing in the way

of resource shortages and robots had long ago solved all labour shortages.

The age of expansion

It was the early 1900s when they first encountered the Vampire species, the first race they had met, who had also started seriously exploring space. Vampires, as they are today, are pale skinned people with red eyes and lips. The royal bloodlines even had naturally occurring and fully functional wings. They were long lived, some getting hundreds of years old, but their lifespan was finite. They did, however, possess more physical power than a human often being many times stronger and hardier.

Humanity, upon meeting the Vampire’s quickly learned their languages and set up trade routes and agreements to share technological advances. Vampires, while not as universally advanced as humans, did have one or two technologies, such as gravity generators and shield generators, that Earth wanted to get its hands on.

By the mid-1930s, humanity had also encountered the Elf and Brick races and entered into similar treaties with them.

Elves, a nature worshiping race of pacifists, had little in the way of weapons but were happy to trade ecologically friendly power sources with the rest of the galaxy while asking nothing in return. To them, reducing pollution and ecological impact throughout the galaxy was rewarding enough. Their evolutionary path had led them to having quick reflexes and acute vision.

Elves had also invented an advanced propulsion technology. The Teodar of Deval Propulsion Drive was faster and more power efficient over long distances than anything that the other races had. Humanity, was getting faster speeds with its Quantum-Disruption Drive’s but was using vastly more power to do so, while short term speeds were faster than TD-Drives they could not sustain them for any great length of time.

The Brick race was physically very much like humans but skewed towards what humans perceived as beauty. They had natural physical fitness and a universally friendly temperament, valuing community above all else.

It did not take long for the first mixed species children to begin to appear. At first the Earth government had little interest in this, socially the appeal of attracting a Brick spouse was obvious. They were naturally pre-disposed to beauty and universally charming. Like the rest of the races encountered, they had finite life spans, which was where the issues began.

By the 1940s it became known that mixed species children did not inherit the natural immortality of humanity. Government scientists pointed out that within three generations, there could be enough critical pollution of the human bloodline for humanity to lose this immortality completely.

This is when things turned. Inter-species relations were forbidden for all humans and mixed species children would be considered non-human upon reaching adulthood.

As you would expect socially speaking, this caused some unrest on human worlds.

While a great many people objected to the new laws, it was understood why this decision had been made and most humans acquiesced to the will of the government.

The rise of oppression

It was a little while later in the 1950s when unrest began to set in. Humanity, the most successful of all the races, was becoming more and more isolated from other species. They had undergone a social change that led them to think of non-humans as somehow unclean, or less cultured than them.

Earth leadership reflected these views as they hit the edge of the galaxy. With no more ability to expand away from galactic core and an ever-growing population of citizens that never died of old age, they had to keep expanding and began to colonise the worlds of the so-called younger races. Often violently removing them from the more premium land on their worlds. In more than one case, the native races were relocated to nearby moons.

When these practices became known the to the other major races, there was a political push back. As a response to this, Earth declared its intent to expand into the neighbouring Brick and Vampire territory. This resulted in the first major galactic conflicts on record.

Humanities technological superiority made for a very one-sided battle. It soon became obvious that they had not been honouring the shared technology treaties and agreements. Humanity took a large portion of the galaxy. Entire planets were evacuated, and humanity moved into mostly intact cities across vast numbers of worlds.

Humans enjoyed the luxuries that came with this sudden expansionism.

Though there is little recorded about this topic, it is believed that this was the point when it was decided that rather than using robotic labour, they would repurpose the lesser races and began relocating them to small colonies close by, in order to help build infrastructure and work in service of human citizens.

The empire

Realising that humanity’s ever-growing numbers and love of sparsely populated worlds would cause another wave of expansionism eventually, the Vampires and Elves created a great council, pooling their resources in order to draw a line and hold the humans at bay. Because of the divide in territory, they were cut off from the Brick race who lay at the other side of human controlled space.

The new council held its line firm and generated enough human losses in conflicts that humanity simply expanded in the other direction and completely absorbed all of brick space.

Because bricks were physically similar to humans and genetically attractive, it was decided that they could not be allowed to tempt humans into illegal relationships.

Many bricks saw the coming changes in the political landscape and started leaving their own territory in the opposite direction of the human empire. Setting their sights on the unexplored edges of the galaxy.

Those who were not able to leave were soon put on massive space liners and pointed at vampire and elf space. Humanity was not quite ready to exterminate the entire species, but they were willing to make them someone else’s problem.

Conditions aboard the liners were not good. The infrastructure that was in place aboard these ships could not sustain them for the journey. It is estimated that over 70% of all brick refugees died before the great council could rescue them as none dared to cross the human border.

It wasn’t long before the brick species was considered eliminated by humanity. A few bricks managed to impersonate humans and stay safe within human space. How many is exactly is unknown but the human government saw it as enough of a threat that they began scanning citizens at all major installations. When Bricks were found, they were eliminated instantly. This was considered encouragement for the remaining brick infiltrators to give themselves up and simply face deportation.

By the early 1970s it was standard procedure for any no-human to have armbands to identify themselves. Any non-human without correct identification was shot on site, no questions asked, reegardless of species.

The Great war

It was 1974 when a single brick woman, Lea Ra-Kay, managed to successfully sneak out of Human space after living among them for years. She had become adept at fooling sensors and even held a high military rank. She was beginning to show signs of her age and knew it was time to leave. She brought with her to vampire space, hundreds of hours of video footage, documents and maps that clearly showed the extent of human brutality, as well as some stolen technology that she hoped would aid the great council.

Because of her efforts, it became known that within human space the abuse of younger races was a hellscape, with slavery being standard practice and mass exterminations of any non-human colony who did not serve the empire correctly.

Some colonies were even experimented on by human scientist who were trying to extend the genetic advantages of humans. It was believed that they had even found ways to merge specific alien traits with human children while maintaining their immortality.  This was called the “Bio-stasis initiative” and it is estimated that at least five entire worlds of assorted races were harvested for genetic material in order to get the results required. The galaxy was shaken by the unthinkable acts that they now knew to be happening inside of Human space.

The woman who brought this information to the attention of the galaxy killed herself the day after reaching safety. She was unable to live with the things she had done in the name of her own survival.

She cut herself until she bled to death while taking enough stimulants to ensure she stayed awake and aware until her last moments. Her suicide note said this:

“There is no blade in existence sharp enough to remove my shame. May my suffering absolve me.”

It wasn’t even a month after this that the great council decreed that doing nothing in the face of such evil was no longer acceptable. War was declared on humanity. Vampires, elves and every younger race who had ships joined in the war. The vampire leader at the time, a great man, President Ty, was recoded as saying this:

“The time has come for all people, of all races, of all planets, in all of the galaxy to stand strong against the human threat. It will be a long and hard fight that we may not be able to win. But… If it comes down to one single man or woman, it is their only mandate to stand against tyranny until they can draw breath no more. If they do not, then they are endorsing the horrors that humanity is engaged in. All good people should be willing to die in this fight if that is what is required, because failure to overcome humanity is quite literally worse than death. We allowed this monster to grow for too long and now it is our only responsibility to kill it by any means necessary.”

The was played in loop across all channels for the next few weeks. The public took the core message and the mantra that grew out of it was simple and impassioned one: “By any means necessary.” The point being simple and poetic. The promise was made.

Over the next decade the war was brutal and devastating. Humanity had crept into over 80% of known space. On the odd occasion that people surrendered to the Human forces, they were tortured, enslaved, degraded and brutally murdered, often publicly. This was supposed to terrify the enemies of humanity but instead it made them stronger, the resolve set in. A darker tone was set. The war stopped being about ensuring freedom of all people and became simply about extinguishing humanity.

Blades are born

The forces good in the galaxy, facing their end, used stolen technology and research to create a weapon.

The blade species was made from the genetic components of all races. Power of a Vampire, the speed of an Elf, the physical perfection of Bricks and the stolen immortality of Humans. They took a thousand other little traits from the younger races and merged them. Many mutated things came out of that lab before the balance was finally struck and blades were born.

The name ‘Blades’ was given to the race to honour the last words of Lea Ra-Kay, the woman who brought human tyranny to light and supplied the basic technology that the project was based upon.

The genetic splicing that humans were so proud of was turned against them. The balance was found between the traits of the races and blades were more powerful than anyone could have hoped for.

With the help the genetic tooling pioneered by humans, a batch of ten thousand blade’s was grown to maturity in just a year. Thanks to their natural but unexpected ability to communicate with a kind of interspecies hive mind, the race matured socially as well as physically in the same short time.

Blades were not only effective and powerful warriors in their own right, but they were also something else. They could bend reality around them through manipulating an energy field that they all shared. They called it ‘The Well’ and through its use they exceeded the hopes of all the universe. They soon went from bending the laws of physics to something bordering on magic. Science had no explanation for how they were doing the things they were capable of. They could create things out of nothing, teleport vast distances and bend the perception of people around them. A few of the blades even showed that they were able to manipulate the very flow of energy around them, allowing them to disable technology with a thought.

The Blades were grateful for not only their existence but for being allowed to use their abilities to their fullest extent. The citizens of free space treated them like heroes. They were given only one guideline: Kill humans.

It was also soon realised that when a blade fell in battle, their connection to the now mystical ‘Well’ was severed, allowing all remaining blades more power. Essentially, killing them made the rest stronger. No one was sure what the upper limit of this power would look like.

The abilities of the new race not only turned the tides of the war but were so devastating to humanity that they actually began to retake entire sectors of space. The tide had turned.

Mistakes

The balance of power in the universe changed fast. In just two years, the humans were driven back to their original territory. They took total losses in almost every encounter with blades. Though there were only ten thousand of them originally by the time a few thousand had been killed, the rest were powerful enough to single handily take out entire starships. They became monsters in the shadows to humanity, while aware that suddenly things had changed, they were not entirely sure why. Blades did not leave survivors. Humanity scrambled to try and understand what was happening to them.

At first blades killed without question. They murdered every human they encountered, but as time went on, they started questioning the morality of what they were doing and began refusing to murder unarmed people. They started bringing back prisoners and set up their own small city on a planet close to the front line. The Blades were developing their own sense of justice od culture.

This is when the question of who the great evil in the galaxy was became blurred.

While no one is arguing that humans had started the fight and committed atrocities that could not be forgiven, the council of elven and vampire powers had not only allowed but encouraged blades to murder every human they could find.

The truth was, the entire time the war was raging, there were humans who were helping with a resistance and ensuring refugees got out of Earth controlled space. There were a great many good humans but to the great council, all humans were enemies and nothing more. Many good people died in the blade attacks. This had the effect of eradicating the resistance movement on Earth without the Earth government even realising it was there.

Humanity was beaten back until they had only the Sol sector left. This became the most well defended system in all the history of the galaxy. Humanity was trapped. The great council could not break their defences, but humanity was not going to risk pushing back either. While here was an outpost or too that had been missed due to the size of the galaxy, the human empire was considered, beaten. Humans were hunted down and killed like vermin across the galaxy. Only those in the Sol sector were safe.

This is the point where the great mistake was made. The council, terrified of what the blades would do once the enemy was gone, created a genetic virus that was designed to cut blades off from their energy source and leave them no more dangerous than any other race. The problem, was that the blades were made from the genetic material of many races. The virus was released, and blades started showing signs of sickness within a day of its spread. The virus mutated and began to slowly kill all the biological entities it encountered.

Medicine was issued to vampires, elf and the remaining brick citizens who soon recovered. This was only possible because the genetic mapping of these races was so well documented most diseases could be tackled fast.

The virus began to spread through the galaxy and most younger races simply died without the access to the medicines that the well genetic technologies of the major races.

Most of the younger races were killed by the virus within a month; even animals died. The death tolls were unimaginable. It was assumed that it may even have spread outside of the galaxy. Planets were left as barren ghost worlds.

To make the death toll even regretful, the blades were not cut off from their ‘Well’ as intended. The mutated virus didn’t affect their link to it on any level. It did kill them, though, slowly.

Hope

At some point, it’s not known when a blade woman defected to the Human side, on the condition that she would not be asked to take part in the war. She offered information and to be a biological sample for scans and test. She was the only blade that was ever scanned up close by humans.

In all the violence and defeat, humans had learned humility and the will of the empire was nothing compared to the remorse and shame of the human people who were revolting against the government on every colony they had left. Humans had, it seemed, changed.

The Blade woman, Aygah, found a home for herself with a researcher named Jonathan Michaels. They were able to start a family and made a life for themselves at a research outpost that was on a forgotten arm of the rim of the galaxy bordering Vampire space.

A daughter was born to them. They called her Joanne, after Jonathan’s mother. She was a smart child who was born with the ability to channel a tiny amount of power from the blade Well. As expected, she did not inherit her father’s immortality. Something that caused Jonathan a great deal of concern and sadness.

The outpost gained in popularity as a destination for refugees. It was believed that a blade living their offered security. It became known as a place of safety for anyone who wanted nothing to do with the war. This was more of an urban legend that any hardened rule that the colony had. It grew from a little outpost into a massive city.

It housed member of both sides, humans, blades, vampires, bricks and surviving members of the younger races. The city took in anyone who asked for refuge, turning away only military vessels and political individuals. Aygah and Jonathan had risen to unexpected leadership positions within the colony as it lacked any formal governance. They decided early on that housing political figures would only make their home a target and the rule was made.

Both sides knew about the city and left it be; no good would come from attacking them, for either side. It was not a key location and the residents kept to themselves. The fact that it was home to a now very powerful blade woman made it a very scary target to attack with little benefit on offer for a victory.

The city colony thrived, soon the planet became known as Royaume, an ancient word for Kingdom from a long dead Earth language. This name was given to it by outsiders who were elevating the place into legend. Residents always referred it as “the city” and nothing more.

The most powerful of the blades, Gower Saint, the man they called king came to live in the city too. Him, and a small group of blades came for the promise of peace. They had sworn off the war and Aygah welcomed more of her kind, knowing it would give them more security as time went on.

Then the virus was released.

As reports came in from intercepted communications, the scope of the virus’s devastation was quickly realised.

A plan was formed.

The city closed its borders and unlike the rest of the universe, they were able to force this isolation because they had healthy blades; powerful blades who were getting even more powerful as the rest fell ill. They were able to repel would be visitors with their will alone.

Over the next six years, the scientist of the city worked to find a solution for the plague. There seemed only one option that could work, it was to amplify a single blades power until they could re-write the genetic code of entire races eradicating the virus. As ridiculous as this plan sounds now, the power of the remaining blades was tiptoeing into god-like and this plan seemed viable.

Side effects

As if the universe itself was bringing them judgement, the Virus affected humanity in a way that no one could predict. Humanity was not taken into consideration when the virus was designed and no treatment for them was ever researched. When it mutated and started behaving in a way that was not intended, humanity was just starting to get infected via its very limited trade routes. It kicked their metabolisms into a very high state to fight off the infection. The result was that they could live, the virus didn’t kill them, but it did rob them of their immortality. For the first time ever, humans began to age, and rapidly.

They were enraged and because the rest of the galaxy was now dealing with the fallout from the younger races dying, Earth struck out and hostilities began again. Their ageing made them feel like they were running out of time and they were angry. Humanity may have had very few ships, but they were unified and they had spent their time in isolation, making them more and more hardy.

The war ignited once more; humans were going directly for the home worlds of the major races.

The city looked out across the galaxy through broadcasts and scans, and they knew the war would come for them next. They were close to having the device working and eradicating the virus. This was no longer going to matter though. There wouldn’t be anything left to save once the war had played out.

The goal of the project changed. At this point, Jonathan was a senior researcher and designer on the great project. With the help of Aygah and Gower with their innate understanding of the physics of the universe a new plan was hatched.

They needed advanced computer models and the total energy of the blades ‘Well’ to accomplish their goal. They planned to use the abilities natural to a blade, they would bend reality to their will. Make a few edits, but rather than on a local scale they would do it on a far larger scale.

The new plan was to remove the virus from everyone they could touch with their mind and change the flow of energy in the vicinity of the city just enough to disable all the higher energy bands that weapons worked on.

They would make their city impossible to attack for both sides, then wait it out while they kill each other.

The plan was good.

Then more blades died.

The blades in the city became something new. They literally emanated the power of the ‘Well.’ Their eyes smoked with power and their veins glowed purple with energy.

It was suddenly obvious that the limits of the power at their disposal had been drastically underestimated.

Details are thin regarding the next events, but at some point, a ship arrived in orbit. The ship held refugees from Earth. They were showing signs of advanced age, and all scans showed they were free from the virus. They simply had nowhere else to go.

It was put to Gower and Aygah as the most powerful blades to be the ones to make the decision. They voted to allow the ship access to the planet. As far as they could tell, there was no threat to the planet by allowing one very well scanned ship of elderly people a safe place to die.

The ship landed on the main dock in the centre of the city. Moments after touching down it was destroyed via a self-destruct sequence. The gas cloud contained active virus spores. This was an intentional attack.

It was never understood which side of the war sent he ship, or if the people aboard knew they were going to die but one faction had obviously realised how powerful the remaining blades were becoming and took action to remove them from the galactic stage.

Aygah and Jonathan’s daughter, Joanne, was killed in the initial blast. She was in the dock working on the shield generator when the explosion happened.

The primary research facility containing Gower, Aygah, Jonathan and a team of engineers and scientists was sealed automatically the moment the system detected the virus in the air.

Everyone in the city died.

The people on the inside of the facility were infected, but being inside the most advanced scientific facility on the planet gave them enough time to make a treatment. It wouldn’t cure them, but it did slow the effects enough that they hoped to finish their grand plan, with a few alterations in place.

The coffin

The team worked for literally years in the facility, fighting off the effects of the virus and surviving on what rations they had and what the blades were able to materialise for them. The details are not known, but eventually the plan was ready.

Jonathan had aged rapidly as a side effect of the virus. Most of the blades had passed away over the years, leaving just the two most powerful. Gower and Aygah.

Gower died on the morning he was supposed to enter the device.

Aygah was showing advanced signs of the virus was expected to live only a few hours.

She entered the coffin at nine in the evening of the last day of 2012.  At ten in the evening, a heavy cruiser from an unknown race appeared in orbit of the planet. It’s not known which side it represented, but the long tubular ship began blasting the long dead city from orbit. Eventually hitting the facility.

The device was having its external power supply charged in a large energy reactor room in the basement. They weren’t sure if they had the juice to get it to critical mass, but when a plasma blast hit the main power grid, the device was super charged in seconds even though the rest of the facility was destroyed.

That’s the moment then it was activated, and the first iteration of reality was ended.

THE EARLY ITERATIONS.

The emotional events that led to Aygah taking the Coffin, coupled with the life she had led up until that point took its toll. The knowledge that the one place she called home was turned to ash the moment it was activated resulted in her going too far. She was the only blade left and had unlimited access to the ‘Well.’

She instructed the computer to make as many changes as required to give her peace and simply told it to keep her unconscious until this was done.

No one is sure how many attempts at re-writing reality were required, but the computer was able to make the changes over a great deal of time. It was using its own quantum core, and Aygah herself was acting as a biological processor for it, a processor with unlimited energy.

Eventually it came to an end point. The moment where it handed control back to her.

Even though thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of temporary realities must have been created and destroyed to get to this point, they existed only long enough for the computer to make the next change. Because of this they are all, in total, referred to a “transitions” and the place where Aygah awoke is considered Iteration two.

It is known that Aygah perceived all of reality though a virtual interface known as ‘the mirror.’ What form this actually took is not known.

Aygah was able to watch the predictions of how reality would play out based on a perfect simulation of all the universe.

The computer had followed its basic set of criteria. Records of that that means were not stored outside of the coffin and are not known. The resulting universe looked very different to what was there before.

Upon inspecting the new iteration of reality, Aygah was unimpressed. The computer met its criteria by putting all races on a trajectory towards self-destruction.

No species had left their own star system. Humans were mortal, and the most advanced computers were measured in gigahertz and made of a silicone. It was a universal dark age with technology that was so basic it had no chance of ever solving basic issues like resource depletion.

It is assumed that Aygah was in a less than stellar mental state after losing everything she loved, her entire reality. She was as alone as it was possible to be and wielding the power to re-write all of reality.

She did what most people would do. She tried to get her life back.

The early iterations were motivated only by her own desire for peace. She learned to wield the power had been given and began storing the series of events that led to specific individuals. She was eventually though trial and error, able to get reality back on track.

She tried to reinsert herself into the universe multiple times, with varying results, often trying to get her husband and daughter back. Each time she thought she had succeeded, a new threat would rise. She began to think that the universe was designed to destroy itself.

Eventually, she realised that the biggest motivating force in the galaxy was death. Or in the case of humanity, the lack of death encouraging them to expand.

She experimented with different life spans and allowed multiple different biological equalisers to rise and fall. She settled on the original races. With some changes.

All the Major races were well suited to immortality and allowed to enjoy it. They had good ethics and long lives made them wise. Humans, on the other hand, trended towards paranoia and obsession with ensuring their own survival. She tried countless variations but realised that there was no way humans could keep their immortality and not become a galactic evil. She took it from them, but gifted it to bricks, elves and vampires.

Then she lived a normal life, a life she loved for a little while. Her daughter was reborn and her life was back on track. Her husband Jonathan died of old age in his sleep. She allowed it to happen. It devastated her, but it was a small price to pay for a galaxy at peace. Eventually her daughter too passed away of advanced age. This destroyed her and she returned to her coffin to watch reality unfold at an accelerated rate. Eventually, an unknown force entered the peaceful universe. A force from outside of the galaxy.

The oppressive race that she was unable to identify sported the same tubular ships that destroyed her home at the end of the first reality. She tried and tried but she could not stretch her ability to affect the universe beyond the milky-way galaxy, she was able to move freely inside the time stream though. She allows the attacking force to enter the galaxy to see how things would unfold if she left them alone.

It is said that when she saw the identity of the attacking race, it shook her to her core. It was something familiar to her and something she was unwilling to document. The attackers are currently documented only as “the catalyst”

Aygah tried again over and over to create a peaceful universe that would be ready when the catalyst came. Time after time, she failed. No matter what she did at the same point in time, regardless of the state of the universe, the catalyst would arrive with its war ships and events would pan out as she had witnessed the first time.

This is when she changes the criteria.

THE CORE ITERATIONS

The next few iterations were her tweaking the balance she had struck for the galaxy. She knew what was required to make the races get along, but now she needed to make sure they were ready when the catalyst came.

She tried many things to motivate the races, but peace bred complacency and power bred war. She needed to do something, or she was doomed to not allow time to progress.

She needed to work on the small things. Firstly, she knew there were people’s essences stored within her coffin that she could rely on. People who would behave in ways she could understand and predict.

The next few iterations she spent experimenting with when to insert these people for maximum effect. She tried putting them at the dawn of technology and then putting them at the end of the universe. There appeared to be a sweet spot emerging where they could do the most good and be young enough to still be engaged with the universe.

She also realised that she needed a lot fewer people than the thought. There existed a small group of people that, when allowed to meet, would change the face of the universe whether or not she planned it for them.

• Gower, the King of the Blades.
• Ba’an Ty the most trusted leader the universe ever saw.
• Lea Ra-Kay, the woman who risked her life to bring information back to the great council.
• David Atkinson, a strange computer scientist who hadn’t even existed in the first iteration, but soon proved himself as he naturally reoccurred over and over within the new iterations.
• Her own husband Jonathan Michaels.
• And, to her surprise, her daughter Joanne, who when given chance to reach full adulthood would be willing to fight, he whole galaxy for her vision of what was justice.

The problem soon became the finite lifespan that she had given humans. She needed a loophole to allow her few hand picked humans an edge. She borrowed the idea of Bio-stasis from the horrific mutated humans of the first iteration and gifted it to some people she needed. She also enhanced her team of people in other, though minor, ways to ensure they had the skills and motivations she needed.

After nine hundred attempts with this team being manipulated to be in the exact right place at the right time, she couldn’t help but tire of having to live her life with Jonathan over and over, only to ultimately be reliving every moment of it. That’s when she started using something skin to a snapshot, or shortcut.

Rather than rebuilding reality from the ground up, each time she began changing very minor things and simply forcing the change into reality. She preloaded all the experiences people needed to allow them to fulfil their tasks. Most people in the galaxy weren’t ultimately important to her plan, but those who played a part were pre-loaded and simply dropped into reality. Reality would then absorb them into it with minimal effort on her part.

Her new method worked well, with one exception; Jonathan had developed an immunity to blade energy and trickery. Unknown to him, he and Aygah had lived a thousand lives together, and he began rejecting the changes every time he was inserted, which broke the reality. He felt he was missing a part of himself without Aygah in his life and he would eventually fail to rise to be the hero she needed him to be. He was losing effectiveness as a piece on her board and for reasons she could not grasp, she could not locate a replacement with the correct balance of instincts and skills.

By pure chance, in one iteration, he met a non-organic life form that called herself Elizabeth. In that reality, Jonathan still rejected everything he was preloaded with but did so in a less destructive way.  For the first time in a long time, Aygah added another player to her board. It took her a while to trace the events that lead to Elizabeth’s soul emerging from computer code, but she found it and stored it with the rest of the essences.

After some tweaking and trial and error, she found that directing or controlling Jonathan was not the way to do things. If left to his own devices, his heroism would emerge on its own. She started allowing him to remember previous iterations, and they developed a new understanding. Aygah began identifying herself not at his wife, but as his ex-wife, in order to allow his romantic interest in Elizabeth to flourish, giving him something to fight for in that reality. Aygah had played out their life together many times already and was happy to watch Jonathan live a new life without her.

After a few more failed attempts to get reality ready, Aygah was starting to give up hope. She wanted to try a new angle and in a fresher iteration added a new race; she recycled the spare blade energy that was drifting around the universe and for the first time created something herself, this race was entirely energy it was a race that mixed up the balance of power just enough that it looked possible that the iteration would be ready for the catalyst. Her new race was called “Thinkers.”

People would die. A lot of people. But she had paid that price by giving purpose to the blades energy. She, on some level, gave them a second chance, not that they would know that.

She needed Jonathan and her people to be forged and ready for anything. She saw an end in sight. She put all the pieces on the board and looked at it from her great mirror, that had long since become a part of her.

She let things play out again.

It is not known that happened when the catalyst arrived.

The modern iterations

Aygah tried a few other things, but eventually the best possible iteration was finalised, and she knew that there was simply no balance to strike between life, freedom and struggle that was more suitable than what she had planned.

She made a few changes at the last moment to ensure success:

• She gave all the Major races one language in order to reduce things barriers for their cooperation.
• She made the younger races a little more powerful and diverse.
• She gifted the universe with medical knowledge that was far more advanced than they should really have ha at that time.
• She created pinches in reality to link all the major races via a series of things in space that they called warp holes. She made a few arbitrary changes as to the order they could be traversed in for reasons that made sense only to her.
• She also removed certain technologies from the universe, ensuring they would never be invented. No one other than her would ever be able to change her plan once it was done.

The last thing she did was wipe Jonathan’s mind. She removed from him all memories of his lives. She would leave him with nothing to rebel against. The downside was that she also couldn’t implant a mission or purpose into him as that was done via memory. She knew he would find his own path with Elizabeth and Joanne there to guide him to be the person she knew him to be.

She had saved a very early event where she was almost captured by a group of dangerous humans who had too much power and not enough humility. She allowed them to emerge into this new reality, not knowing how many had happened in between, and she put all the things in place for her people to become heroes on their own without her intervention.

She was beyond remorse for her actions and this was the limits of her ability to see the way it played out.

The “final” iteration

When she saw the new iteration begin to play out, Jonathan started regaining his memories without her intervention. She was worried. She had no idea how, but he was acting in unexpected ways, something she had not encountered for a great many years.

As things played out, she realised that this reality was different somehow. The mix of things was working, but not in the ways she planned. She nudged things as best as she could and kept them on track but had to actually reveal herself when her antagonists plan turned out to be far more well thought out than she had given them credit for.

This iteration of reality was unpredictable and interesting and she had no desire to let an oversight on her part end her plans.

When she investigated, she realised she had been doing this for so long, she had become complacent. She had forgotten to reset everything as well as she thought. Usually, her iterations didn’t last long enough for it to matter, but this was supposed to be the last one and she had left artefacts all over the galaxy, it was a dirty reboot of time and space that should not have even worked. somehow reality had encoded it all into the universe organically in ways she did not understand, which excited her.

She almost reset it to get a clean, predictable version of it. She used her power to look at the version of Jonathan that she had forged. This one was different. Better than the last ones. Everyone here was a little more unpredictable because of the influence of the artefacts she had mistakenly left.

She had no chance of recreating this. She didn’t know what she had done. For the first time, she ran her simulations, and she didn’t know what would happen when the catalyst came.

She decided to stick with her plan. To let things, play out however they would. She was tired. She was emotionally exhausted, and she was too old to keep on trying. This was all the fight he had left inside her.

She revealed herself one last time. She met with Jonathan, gave him all the memories she had saved for him, let him choose his own path. She gave Elizabeth a connection to her AI core that couldn’t be broken, it would help her better enact her part. To Lea, she gave a ship that she knew was needed and rather than playing her usual game of working in mysterious ways, she just handed it over.

She visited David Atkinson, though at this time isn’t known what was said in that conversation, but it was instrumental in her more advanced plans. She also gave him a powerful ship for reasons that only he knows.

She was done, had enough, and just wanted to stop. Her new policy was to just confess all and let the iteration rise or fall on its own.

She didn’t want to be a god to these people. She just wanted to be allowed to live her own life without having to do this anymore. She vowed she would not intervene again. If her plans fell short, it was the universe’s own job to save itself. As far as the people of her new universe were concerned, God was dead.

Aygah’s current activities are unknown, but it believed that she is living among the Elven people and experiencing time at its natural rate.

The Fallout?

Aygah made some odd decisions with the current iteration of reality. We know that her realising that she could make basic errors shook her confidence in her own self-appointed status as a god.

She had emotional problems when she began realising that people had to die in order to get her desired results.

Whatever the catalyst is, it was enough to make her being to think that there was no hope for the universe.

It is believed by David Atkinson that regardless of the outcome. While she worked hard to put all things in place, she has no intention of taking an active role in reality again.

The things that Aygah removed from reality may give some indication as to her state of mind and how the plan will play out.

Below is a list of things she changed that seem unrelated to anything:

• Time travel appears to be impossible by design. Aygah has tweaked the flow of energy within the universe in a way that not only prevents time travel from being possible but also removed all traces of temporal sciences.
• Red energy fields were never invented in this reality. All technological energy manipulation is blue energy based. There seems no reason for this. At this time, Basilica is the only ship in the galaxy with red energy field generators.
• The sport of Golf was not invented in this iteration.
• Aygah’s existence as a person is encoded into the iteration, but she made herself legally dead and it is unknown as to if she ever actually lived in it, or if it is an implanted moment from a previous iteration.
• There is no recoded information about Ka’ona Michaels before this current iteration. Whether she is organically emergent, or a key player is not known.
• Pandas are native to Elven worlds, not Earth, and are thriving.
• The language spoken by the major races is actually early modern English. This makes very little sense, as Aygah never learned English in her time as a corporeal entity.

This represents the current timeline as it exists at this moment. There are other pieces of information related to this that were not outlined, including the many lives that Aygah and her team of people led in order to move reality forward. Everything Aygah has ever done appears to be part of a larger plan. Because we do not know how her powers actually work or what her limits actually are, the people if this final Iteration must simply have faith that the plan is good and work for justice and rightness to prevail over evil at every chance they get because they do not know what form the catalyst will take, when it comes however, there are no more second chances.

In Her we trust.

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