The Biomass

Regrouping on Kon

The Gaspid named Strauneph who lived his entire life on Kon, still lives on Kon after all this time. He has been traveling across the surface of an infected planet with his friends for over 6 elapses.

Date: 3 eons, 14,160 eras, 7, elapses, and 22,180 time units

I haven't opened this journal in a long time. I quit writing it in when I realized it just reminded me that I used to be able to fly and now I can't. But something happened recently that I think needs to be written. I imagine the satellites in the sky recorded it, but I still need to write it.

We've been living near the same city of Kaspak, just outside of it, for a long time. We headed here soon after the dome collapsed on our home city. We have to keep moving, or else the green sludge produces walkers to take us. The vehicle has had a surprisingly good life. It is resistant to the slime clogging up its parts, and not a single one of us has broken airlock since we left home so long ago. Our Trins friend was a good engineer. If I was religious, I'd imagine he's in heaven.

Kaspak had a fleet of drones around to keep the scum from causing the dome to collapse, like what happened at our home city. Halk and Frine would coordinate military efforts every time the Biomass produces a monster to take the city. I supposed they could live on like that forever if they had too.

Or at least, that's what I thought until yesterday.

I thought that we would all die of old age and that the city would go on. They were aware of us, we were aware of them. But the city is big enough for people to reproduce. We have no midwives or suits small enough for children, so we'll all be dead of old age or something. Then the Biomass will take us.

It's easy to see how this life is pointless. Every minute of every day is dedicated towards survival. We have to eat synthetic food, open the solar panels, clean them off, move so that we don't get attacked, manufacture the tools that wear down. We are all involved in the effort and we only stop to sleep. All this for what? Only to put off death. But I was a nihilist before this, so I suppose not much has changed.

But for the first time in a long time, something changed. A badly damaged space ship came from outer space, shot down the capacitor field, and cut a hole in the dome with lasers. The contaminated atmosphere rushed in. Nobody stood a chance.

Then two more ships landed in the city.

Everyone inside is dead or dying.

Halk and Frine radioed us and asked us to get closer to the city to see if we could find out what was going on. They're repairing the ship. In fact, they're not just repairing the ship, they're building the three back together, and they're making it bigger.

This is what I've put together based on what the survivors in the satellites are saying and based on what we can see. The Biomass ship, which left Kapkurkonkus over two elapses ago, came back. It left, started the infection at Sha!cuu/a, got damaged, and came back to repair. Soon it will probably depart to infect another place.

Oh yeah, and this whole time it's been shooting lasers into space, and it's pretty much totally destroyed the droid army. Droids don't stand much of a chance against space lasers. It was bad enough when the Biomass didn't have modern weapons. I think it's been shooting down SPIREs.

While I'm in my diary, I might as well jot down the important news from all over the galaxy. There are maybe 200 surviving cities among the five planets in Kapkurkonkus, but only six on this planet. Sarteck decided to go with Uoweeiu's strategy: research and quarantine instead of destruction. It's working decently for them. They only have a hundred or so new infections every day, even though the plague has made its way all around the planet.

Trillitus is in sorry shape. They were doing so well, but they couldn't keep it out of the ocean and now it has free roam of the whole planet. Soon it will look like one of the planets in our solar system. Their protective bubbles are smaller and more numerous though, so maybe that will turn out to be a better strategy.

The Bru/we'em have started to quarantine everything. When they're done construction, every corner of the planet will be inside of sturdy cubicles, all connected to each other, but sealed off. So if you want to go from one dome to another, you can walk through a metal pipe. But at each end of the metal pipe, there's an air lock. So they can still get from place to place, but as soon as one room is contaminated, it gets sealed off. But maybe they don't stand a chance. They haven't been infected for even an entire elapse, but the infected already number in the tens of thousands.

Infected Bru/we'em are hairless. I've seen a few as I've watched the city get infected. That's a mental image I simply can't get out of my head. Hairless Bru/we'em are gross, moreso than featherless Gaspids in my opinion.

But you know, Yog is still clean. The Abas are fine, the Siliconoids are fine, the Trins are fine. They offer support to the infected planets. Some of the ships involved in defending Sha!cuu/a were from Trins Voghusht. Maybe one day, they'll find a solution to the Biomass. Then they can SPIRE this whole planet and recolonize it with the Krogs living elsewhere. I have to find hope somewhere.

Date: 3 eons, 14,160 eras, 7, elapses, and 23,545 time units

So I concluded my last entry with finding hope. I listed all the uninfected sentient species, but I forgot to mention the non-sentient species. You know, maybe the GCS isn't fair to the non-sentient species. There are dozens of them across the galaxy, and we seem to forget they exist.

By the way, three of them are infected. That's probably relevant if I'm going to be keeping the most important facts in here. Really, the only ones safe from infection are the robots building a Dyson sphere. Of course, according to their coding, they'll just shut down once they finish, however many eras that takes.

Anyhow, so the Beulous came in their primitive craft and started to open fire against the ship, which was undergoing some finishing touches. They even got off a few hits. Then the ship launches into space, all the while firing back with lasers. My crew and I couldn't really see what was going on, but we could see some explosions in the sky.

I heard later from Halk and Frine that they had an epic space battle. Unfortunately, the Beulous ships are pretty primitive. They got some serious hits off, though. One of their missiles knocked off a bar of anti-iron. But the Biomass ship made short work of them. They phased and retreated, but the Biomass ship chased them off. I applaud their bravery, but they doomed their planet.

I'm kind of glad it's gone, though. Every day I wondered if it would fire lasers at us while we watched it. It didn't. We watched as great tentacles radiated out from the ship, gathering pieces of city and attaching them to the ship. It gathered the infected into itself. I don't know where the Biomass brain at the center learned to build space ships, but it was built using design aspects of several different species. The propulsion was Trins, the lasers were Phrug, the missiles were Yax, the wiring was Pathron. One of the Krogs I travel with suggested that it just absorbs peoples' brains. I wonder if that's possible?

It was disturbing to watch a body with a thousand tentacles build a flying suit of armor around itself. Some people from the city managed to protect and arm themselves before getting infected, but they stood no chance against the beast. It would either fire the lasers that had yet to be attached or it would simply strangle them. Plus there were apes and runners going around picking off survivors. The resistance didn't last long.

In the end, the monster made a space ship out of a city. It had been completely still for a few hundred time units before being attacked.

And to think that there were superior Yogite warships on their way to destroy it before it left.