Welcome to Free Writing! Quick fiction written for entertainment purposes. This week we have another piece of flash fiction. We’re continuing the story from the last few weeks. So if you haven’t read the others, click here to see them all. Enjoy!

Well this is the final chapter, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said above, if you haven’t read the series before, I recommend starting on an earlier chapter than this one. Also as I have been warning, Free Write will be retiring for a time while I focus on finishing up my novel.

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The next few cycles were very boring for Prime. General White visited several more times with Paul to ask a series of questions, usually related to the Malcontents, or the Form in general. Prime was forthcoming but not always able to answer every question. Occasionally Paul would come alone and they would socialize. Paul had his own questions but they were more scientific in nature and that was a topic Prime was happy to converse about. It also helped it practice its English.

After several cycles, the female ally who had been under the control of the Malcontent recovered and reported to the General. According to Paul, she had very little memory of the prior cycles, perhaps the length of time that she had been under control, but her fuzzy recollections helped corroborate some of Prime’s speculation, somewhat. Paul had no idea what was going to happen now but he suspected everything was going to filter up the chain of command to the ruler of the human’s social governance system, which was called a president.

Other humans of a caste or profession that was not immediately obvious by their garments were brought to visit. They were likely singulars as they often offered elaborate greetings and titles which Prime only partially comprehended, and often chuckled in a non-affectionate manner when Prime attempted to ask questions. Prime was not fond of these humans but they were yet another aspect of the human race. If Prime was to be held in one place, it could at least attempt its surveying mission by analyzing the humans that were brought to it.

After a decacycle Prime began to grow impatience, requesting information on the human’s plans regarding its incarceration. Paul gave him no answers. He hadn’t been allowed home either since the incident started and was worried about his cat, which was apparently an organic sub-sentient being that lived with Paul. The General did not visit Prime after he started asking questions, and the humans in the strange garments, which Paul named as suits, were evasive or incomprehensible in their answers.

Prime could have easily gotten out of the containment. Now that it better understood human offensive capabilities and did not have to maintain stealth, Prime felt confident it could simply burn its way through the walls to escape, however it wanted to stay on good terms with the first organic intelligent species ever encountered, and opted for more diplomatic means of getting what it wanted, it began to ignore the suit wearing humans, reconfiguring into its rock form when one refused to answer its questions or was evasive. They attempted to use Paul to get their questions answered and eventually Prime was forced to use the same tactic on him, however Prime apologized before each reconfiguration.

Then came the seven cycles where nothing visited it. Luckily by this point Prime had managed to decipher the wireless traffic humans used to connect their computer devices. Some of it anyway. It was able to decipher text and determine the difference between image, video, and audio streams, but wasn’t able to decode those yet. It spent the decacycle working on this problem, intercepting text communication, and monitoring hyperbands. There was a medium to high probability that the Malcontent was not the only one on the planet. Rather than give away its position, Prime had not attempted to use a hyperband but simply listened. If there was another Malcontent it would likely attempt to use a hyperband to communicate with its now deactivated compatriot.

Understanding human behavior required more processing power than Prime had at its disposal. At times they acted without any reasonable stimulus, such as when the General finally visited after the seven cycles, informing Prime that it was being released. This surprised Prime greatly. It fully expected that it might eventually be released but more likely it would be slowly released into decreasing secure facilities while it introduced or the humans had assimilated Prime’s capabilities. However the General said it was being released by its request but there would be an envoy to greet it when it was ready to leave the base. Prime asked if it was Paul and was told no. Paul had also been released and was traveling home.

Prime wasted no time to be released. It figured it could track down Paul’s home far quicker once it gained proper access to the internet. It was escorted by soldiers out of the building. As it did, it felt a ping in the hyperband. Before it could react, a white light filled its optics.

~~~

We interrupt your programming to give you this important news bulletin. There has been a series of explosions at the near by Army base. Authorities have issued a warning for all citizens to stay in their homes or places of business and report any strange activity to the number displayed on the screen. There is no information as to the cause of the explosion at this time but we will bring you up to date coverage as we receive it. I repeat…

~~~

It awoke to a hyerband transmission. The source of the transmission identified itself as a Form that it was familiar with. A Form that had been sent on a long distance surveying mission millions of light-years away. That required a significant energy to transfer a hyperband message that far. It took time to wake itself up from its hibernation before it read the message, then it began waking everything up while it also dedicated time to re-broadcast the message. Repeatedly. At high energy.

The message contained one concept, and background locational metadata. The message translated as such.

Malcontent Army. Backup required.

Welcome to Free Writing! Quick fiction written for entertainment purposes. This week we have another piece of flash fiction. We’re continuing the story from the last few weeks. So if you haven’t read the others, click here to see them all. Enjoy!

We’re getting close to the end folks. Just a reminder Free Write will be going on hiatus after this story concludes.

~~~

War
By Nojh Livic

“Complicated,” Paul offered, and Prime nodded its head.

“Yes. That is a complicated,” Prime corrected. Paul shook his head slightly but didn’t offer any further corrections. Prime filed away the statement for further error analysis later.

“Please, just explain as best you can. You can interpret, Doctor,” General White said.

So Prime did.

Explaining interstellar politics to a race that had yet to expand beyond its planet was difficult for Prime. Prime was a scientist, not a historian nor a singular. It also quickly became apparent that humans had a limited concept of time, or rather had a hard time comprehending events that scaled well beyond their life spans, which was a significant percentage smaller than that of a Form in good repair. There was also the issue of English, which Prime believed it had grasped a fair competency at including non-verbal cues, but it quickly became apparent that it required more skill than it had to get across certain concepts. Yet with Paul’s help, Prime persisted.

Prime’s race, for lack of a better word, called itself Form. Like all the other sentient races the Form had encountered, it was an inorganic life form. Form differed from the other races encountered in that the intelligence of a Form was housed in a single body, with some limited variation. The other intelligent races had different chassis configurations, if any at all. The Form called them the Formless. This difference between Prime’s race and the others created some conflict, as they did not place as much emphasis on the individual as the Form and as such, many individual Form were lost. The Form retaliated for a time, until it became obvious to a growing faction that the conflict between the Form and the Formless that the war was accomplishing very little other than destroying more Form. (continue reading…)