Infinitium

(Day 156) May 17th, 2036, Earth

It had been 2 years and 10 months since Johnathan went through the portal. It also looked like another of Johnathan’s predictions was about to come true. Thor had detected gravitational distortions entering his sphere of control headed directly for Earth, Earth II, Earth III, Earth IV, and Trappist-1e. With so many on the way and moving directly towards each of the main planets of Humanity odds approached Unity that this was to be an attack. Thor had prepared for this day since Johnathan had made the prediction and believed himself to be ready.

As soon as the distortions trajectories had been analyzed he’d moved Abi and Amanda as well as her family to one of the backup sites that had been created farthest from the direction of the encroachment into his sphere of influence. He also prepared to control and move every single human in existence to safety if his calculations were off. Thor had tried to create safe havens separated by hundreds of light-years scattered through his area of influence. Currently, he had at least ten planets that would serve as lifeboats for humanity. The “lifeboats” were not exact copies of Earth and had no infrastructure. Thor surmised that most of humanity would rather be without amenities for a couple of days or weeks than be destroyed so he wasn’t overly concerned. Humanity would survive, which was his primary consideration. Amanda and Abi watched from the command center they were in.

“At exactly 12:35 EST two hundred spaceships, each cylindrical in shape measuring 12 kilometers long and 2,500 meters in diameter, appeared around all five planets. The nanites Thor had in orbit could not penetrate the energy barriers that appeared around each which was something he’d have to investigate when he had time. One picosecond later 124,000,000 portals opened inside each ship’s energy barriers, spaced equally. This happened simultaneously in each ship around each planet. Nanites flooded the ships, analyzed the composition and weapons that they were going to launch, and cataloged them for future study. The nanites recorded and removed all organic and inorganic matter they encountered. As the nanites moved to the engineering section of each ship they encountered antimatter containment systems. Thor left the antimatter in the containment device then portaled every containment unit to the other side of the black hole “Unicorn” and collapsed that containment. The explosion was orders of magnitude larger than he’d calculated. The black hole absorbed the radiation that escaped in the direction of Earth. Since black holes warped space, some of the light that was emitted would be bent around the Unicorn and eventually make its way to Earth at the speed of light. In 1,500 years or so, there would be a bright flash in the night sky that would last at least a couple of hours. This day, however, to any humans looking up into the night sky some large ships appeared and then evaporated.

Thor analyzed the weapons they’d been carrying. They had been biological in nature and would have killed all living things they’d come into contact with. If the ships had exploded in orbit around any of the planets they would have destroyed or damaged the planet so badly that millions would have died, even with his ability to evacuate everyone simultaneously. Then there would have been the time wasted fixing the damage. So, the species would kill with biological weapons if it could but would suicide to make sure their goals were met.

“Thor recreated one of the ships in one of the systems that had nothing except a star in it. Within 3 minutes he had reverse-engineered every system on the ship, understood how they were using anti-matter, which was super dangerous, and had infiltrated the computer system it had recreated. It took another 2 minutes to decipher the language and completely understand their electronics and programming languages. Next, he backtracked the path of the gravimetric distortions the ships had made and investigated the planets near the point where the distortions had started in the 20,000-light-year radius he controlled. Within three minutes he had opened portals all the way out to the 30,000-light-year range and found five planets the ships had originated from. They were roughly 26,000 light-years from Earth.

Thor created a portal into the system the attackers had come from and released his nanites onto a nearby lifeless planet. Nanites from other projects were reassigned and the planetoid was flooded to 100% nanite coverage within a minute. Next, he did the same to the planet the attackers had come from. Then he analyzed and cataloged the entire planet and its species.

The sentient race was called the Lexi. They were carbon-based and humanoid. They could have even been mistaken for humans on a dark night. The only obvious difference between them and humans was pronounced cranial ridges, though they were on the sides of the head and not the forehead, like the Klingon from Star Trek. Because their physical structure was so similar to humans it took Thor only a few seconds to map out and be able to control Lexi as thoroughly as he could control humans when the need arose. While part of him was working on the biological angle another part that was cataloging and monitoring all communications noted that the military was getting ready to launch five ships from the moon.

Thor opened portals to the moon and infiltrated everything including the ships that were being readied for launch. Reviewing the ship’s armaments Thor found references that he did not understand. It took another 5 minutes for Thor to access every book and computer, and learn their language and science before he understood that the ships were carrying what Thor thought of as Super Nova Bombs. The bombs would be shot into stars causing them to destabilize and explode. They wouldn’t have worked on any of the stars controlled by Thor, because Thor would have disassembled the bombs before they exploded but the technology seemed sound.

Thor destroyed all five ships and took control of the crews and all personnel on the base and had them portal to their closest habitable planet with Lexi on it. Next Thor converted the moon base and all equipment into nanites. Within seconds the base ceased to exist. Those weapons were just too powerful. Next, he destroyed every single piece of military hardware he could find while simultaneously finding every other planet the Lexi had spread to. Within 24 hours he had discovered, mapped, and analyzed a total of 23 planets controlled by the Lexi.

After reviewing all the documents and files he could find concerning their species as well as discovering the aftermath of their eradication of at least 5 other sentient species near their area of influence Thor decided that drastic measures were needed. Every leader, military general, and military officer suddenly died of unknown natural causes. Next, anything that would allow the Lexi to make it into space dissolved into nothing. Also, like Earth, Thor removed all weapons of mass destruction and their infrastructure to make those weapons as well as any natural resources that might be required disappear. Finally, Thor removed all antimatter stockpiles from every planet the Lexi controlled as well as a couple of stockpiles they had hidden away in various moons around a couple of the planets they occupied. Thor considered wiping out the whole race, but Johnathan’s instructions had also been quite clear. “Kill the leaders and take away their ability to wage war then monitor them or eradicate them, your choice, though genocide should be thought of as a last resort.”

When he was done. Thor briefed Amanda and Abi.

“Definitely a little bit ruthless,” Abi said.

“As per Johnathan’s command, I am authorized to remove that entire species from existence. The weapons they were going to utilize would have wiped out humanity. They’re lucky that I am hesitant to use such a final option.” Thor said with a hint of anger.

“Whoa Thor, I was just giving you a hard time, as they say here. Woo Saa Bro, Woo Saa. I mean seriously, that race has committed genocide at least five times. They’re lucky I’m not in charge. As a construct with far less processing power than you, my vote would have been to wipe them out completely.”

“Thank you Abi, I needed that to snap me out of the state I was in. Have you noticed that I am displaying more and more emotions lately? He asked.

“I wasn’t going to say anything but yes, you doing okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I feel more alive, is the only way I can describe it. I’m still an Artificial Intelligence but I get angry, I believe I’m worrying, I get happy, and sometimes I find myself laughing. I never used to laugh.”

“Well, your brain was modeled after Johnathan, maybe some of his characteristics are starting to wear off on you.

“Possibly,” he said.

“Let me check on the Lexi's overall response,” Thor said.

The Lexi, mostly Isolationist by nature, lost their shit. Some rallied and started to call to fight. Others soon lost interest though when they saw that they had no way to figure out what had just happened or who was behind it. In fact, the lack of an external threat that they could detect caused the Lexi to turn against one another and local conflicts erupted, which didn’t escalate very far when they also realized that all of their weapons of mass destruction were gone as well though there were deaths on all 23 planets.

In the end, Thor left the Nanites to monitor and destroy any attempts by the Lexi to create anything that would ever make them a threat again. He also allowed nanites to infiltrate all of the bodies but set them to a neutral state. They would neither help nor hinder the Lexi. He wanted them in place in case some catastrophe befell one of the planets so that he could take control and move them to one of the other planets controlled by the Lexi. He’d left them defenseless but he felt that he had an obligation to at least try to prevent them from being wiped out completely.

As Thor's normal expansion moved to encompass the Lexi he would make sure that they did not find a way around the restrictions he’d placed on them. In a couple of Generations, when the xenophobes had died off humanity might make first contact with them. For now, though they were off-limits and quarantined.