Point Zero by Aer-ki Jyr (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

1

September 23, 154930

Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

Earth

“What happened to you?” Sara-012 asked as she walked into the Atlantis amphitheater along with a few other stragglers showing up late and getting their first view of the much larger Paul-024.

“I ate my Wheaties,” he said pithily as Sara sat down in the second row next to Erin-016, who looked like she was barely able to keep her eyes open. “I’ll explain when everyone is here. This is going to take a lot, and I don’t feel like repeating myself.”

“I apologize in advance if I puke,” Ivan-029 said, sitting down in the 8th row and deliberately not next to anyone else.

“That’s everyone that’s coming,” Wilson said as Hank-075 walked in the doorway ever so slowly, and wincing with every step. “The others are either unconscious or won’t stay awake long enough to matter. I’ve got live links to their rooms, so if they’re currently awake they’ll hear you, or they’ll have a recording to rewatch later.”

“Make sure the feed is ultra secure,” Paul said, his green/white eyes narrowing dangerously. “A lot of what I have to say can’t leak out, or there will be consequences.”

“Oh?” Jason-025 asked, stifling a yawn that he couldn’t help, though his mind was definitely registering a ‘shit level’ glance from Paul that worried him more than his best friend having stepped on a Mario mushroom and gone giganto.

Paul held up a ‘wait’ finger while Wilson moved to a side console and made some modifications to the recording and streaming system, then he turned back and nodded at Paul to proceed.

“The changes you see in me are the same that are occurring in you now,” he said, leaning forward on the dais that was a little too short for his elbows on the front end, so he draped them over the higher front and interlocked his fingers in a posture that suggested a long, but informal lecture. “I just got a head start, and mine are complete. I wasn’t going to return until they were. A lot of our alterations will be identical, others will be unique. What’s happening to us is a natural upgrade the universe keeps in rare supply, and it’s a non-Essence rush Essence occurrence. Simply put, we outgrew our old bodies, so now we’re getting the next level ones.”

“How?” Bo-065 asked.

“Our Saiyan genetics caused us to get so many experience points that they pushed us to this level. Why it didn’t occur earlier pre-Saiyan I’m not sure about, but the reason it’s happening to all of us at the same time is because it was due earlier and was put on hold. We never stopped training, and with our metabolisms kicked so high we could never truly rest. When I left with Cal-com he suggested that I become ‘small,’ and in doing so I stopped training, stopped Essence use, and mentally tried to relinquish all responsibilities to the universe and just be me, inside the confounds of my body. When that happened, all the pent up training effect kicked in and pushed me into a rather violent cascade of changes, which it seems you all are also going through.”

“Ya think?” Kerrie-057 scoffed.

Paul held up a single finger from his clasped hands. “I have information you do not, due to the fact that my pent up training effect triggered more than just this genetic rewrite. It seems I’m a little different from the rest of you with regards to how I view the universe, and that slight perspective difference allowed me to break through another barrier we didn’t know existed. It’s called the Saiolum, and is an energy field generated from biological life. I have limited access to it now, and in addition to that the fogginess my mind had been in previously has lifted. I needed a day off more than the rest of you,” he admitted.

“What can this energy field do?” Davis asked, sitting in the front row along with Wilson who had joined him right after Paul began speaking.

“A great many things. Things that make our current empire and everything we’ve discovered look pathetic. When I made my first breakthrough I didn’t know it was happening. I lost it when me and Cal-com,” he said, gesturing to the Voku sitting in the back row by himself as if he didn’t belong here in such an elite crowd, “had to deal with a situation on Ha’shavi. I slipped back into combat mode and lost my breakthrough as I numbed up to it again. When I later relaxed deep enough in a fortuitous moment, my new friend didn’t risk me losing it again and intervened. That was my first direct contact with Azoro Hikeer Mi’da’ruun of an extinct race called the Sha’kier.”

“Wait,” Megan-026 said quizzically. “Contact through this energy field?”

Paul nodded. “He no longer has a body, and his Core has been melded to the Saiolum to grant him and a few others of his race the immortality they needed to break the development plateau their civilization had reached. You see, while they discovered the Saiolum, they did not know about Essence or self-sufficiency. They were all newbs, dying off and leaving their knowledge in texts…but texts can only go so far. Azoro and the other Ju’en’xa became the leaders and repositories of knowledge and wisdom for their race, interfacing through mediaries who were open to the Saiolum and were trained to operate as conduits for them, known as Ke’lars. They’d relinquish control of their bodies and the Ju’en’xa would take control temporarily, either to offer wisdom or to do things the Ke’lars did not have the skill to do. Though that’s not what’s happening to me. I don’t have the skill or development to be a Ke’lar, and each time Azoro speaks to me it takes a physical toll on the transmitter…which is me…so our conversations are limited, though growing in length as I continue