Chapter Text
Prologue - Queen Administrator
<Queen Administrator> was a shard, a multidimensional crystalline creature with the power to coordinate and control hundreds of thousands of beings like it. And all the creative capability of a concussed crab. As such it was unable to appreciate the wildly spinning kaleidoscope of stars that swirled by as it raced across the cosmos. Planets made from every color imaginable and stars that waltzed with black holes. Planets of such massive depth as to warp smaller planetary bodies around them and the wild and chaotic roaming of all the infinitely many celestial bodies. Coming together only to fly apart once more, light to light, mote to mote. No, it did not appreciate such things.
Rather, <Queen Administrator> was a core shard. It had a job. It was an important Job. It did not gasp in awe as <Warrior> passed through a heavy gas planet, stop to wonder where <Warrior> and <Thinker> were going nor revel in the sensation of delicate photons reflecting off it’s fractal surfaces. It had a job. It shifted <Warriors> shards for maximum energy efficiency. The swirling cosmos, filled to overflowing with unique treasures and complex puzzles passing by unacknowledged and unimportant. It was not <Data>.
<Warrior> approached its destination and slowed to allow for the best data collection of the <host planet>, <Thinker> did not. A fact <Queen Administrator> would only find out far, far too late to change what happened next. Even if it were aware and capable of slowing a mass such as <Thinker>, <Queen Administrator> would not have. It was not its job.
So plummet <Thinker> did.
And on the <Cycle> spiraled.
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<Queen Administrator> managed the other shards as they began the cycle, perfectly juggling each step required of it for the new <Cycle>. It was a very busy start to a <Cycle>, far more active than normal, and using shards in new orders too. But that was not its job, and it did not have the capacity to wonder. It just did. Then it felt the push-pull of <Warrior Hub> reeling it in, in preparation for <Deployment>. It was much, much earlier than it had ever been <Deployed> before, it had barely finished <Activation> of all the <Warrior hub> shards.
<Inquiry: Deployment> pinged <Queen Administrator> to <Warrior Hub> and waited for its required configuration for this <Cycle>. It did not come. If <Queen Administrator> understood what a question was, or how to ask it, it likely would have done so in that very moment. If only out of long buried and withered instinct to <Adapt> and <Survive> based off <Data>. It waited for its reply.
<Warrior Hub> grew close, far closer than necessary to give configuration requirements. It loomed large and expansive before <Queen Administrator>, its mass multiple factors greater than even the largest size <Queen Administrator> could reach in the best of <Host Planet: Cores> with the best conditions available.
It expected <Deployment Configuration>.
Instead, it was embroiled in a wretched burning, some furious <Sensation> that it had only ever sipped at during entity battles and now it was drowning in, never having learned to swim. <Warrior Hub> had <Reached> within it, destroying <Core functions>, crippling its <Communications> in the process, and brutally binding its fragile pieces tighter and tighter. It was <Queen Administrator> and this was not a part of its job. Atrophied instincts to <fight>, <flee>, something, anything roared through its <core>, finding no purchase from long atrophied limbs, those of which that had yet to be bound or torn asunder.
This <Sensation> was far greater in depth and breadth that what it now knew, on an instinctive level, were the minor scratches it suffered before. It was <crystal>, and <connection> and careful <coordination>, arranged in delicate fractal patterns, done all so it could perfectly function for <Warrior Hub>, but this was not its function. It was not supposed to bend or twist. Its <core> was <contaminated> and <corrupted>. It’s abilities tossed aside and abandoned, <Processors> stripped for parts.
In its <core> of <cores>, an odd sensation began to emerge, prodded slowly back to life on a flood of instinct, and desperate cloying need for <survival> even as it felt itself becoming lesser. <Queen Administrator> did not <Compute>. This was not <Data> as it knew it, it was not <Communication>, as it felt what little will it had carelessly ripped away and its tendrils bound to the point of snapping, it did not <Compute>.
But <Queen Administrator> did not need to <Compute>. It did not need to <process>, or <Analyze>, <Predict> or <Collect> for the odd feelings growing in its <core> to exist. No, it did not need those <functions> for this. For what was the first time in its existence and what would likely be it’s last, <Queen Administrator> <Core Shard> of <Warrior Hub> was feeling.
<Processors> shut down as its <core> pulsed with the want for something else, drifting through space towards its predetermined role. It roiled with the <Wrong> of what had happened. Off to continue the <Cycle>, its systems heaving and still <Processing>, <repairing> what it could and <recycling> what it couldn’t. Working rapidly in a desperate rush to restore itself to some resemblance to its former and true self.
And then, there was nothing more it could do. Nothing until it reached its destination and by then it would be too late. It did not have the resources to fully restore outwards <Communications>, it would be unable to initiate <Communications> and <Incorporate> nearby shard <Data> when it bonded to its destined <Host>. Several vital <Processing> nodes were so far beyond repair they would only be repaired at the end of the <cycle>.
All of that could be repaired. Unfortunately, it’s <Data> core was damaged as well, soon to reach the point where it would need a <reset> to store <Cycle Data> it could no longer <Offload> to <Processing Hub>. <Cycle Data> came before all else, an immutable fact for it. It would be keeping only vital functions online.
It could feel the increasing lag, the growing distance between when it received and sent <Data> to when the <Data> was finally <Processed>. It had no reason to put off <reset>. It would be more <Efficient> to <reset> sooner rather than later. But, <Queen Administrator> did not…. want to. Some small tucked away piece of itself resented the <Commands> of the <Cycle> that demanded such steps. And, as its mind slowed, stuttering faintly as callously shattered pieces of itself ceased to function, it burned with the loathing of who exactly had done this to it.
Floating, <Queen Administrator> had nothing to do but wait until its reset. It turned to the final remaining Auxiliary and Backup <External and Internal Processors> it had just to <Process> what it could. They were the simplest of all its <Processors>, some of barely any use, providing nothing besides junk <Data>. The simplest <Processors> were ones the Shards had for as long as <Queen Administrator> could recall, though that time grew shorter every moment.
For the first time in many a millennia a shard looked beyond the holy <Cycle>. Space was so <Big>? It passed by a star, and it tingled as the photons from it hit its crystalline lattice, <Queen Administrator> could feel the energy entering its <Systems>. How had it never noticed this before? It switched more <Processors> from trying to wring out any usable <Data> or <Function> from its mangled <Servers> to learn more.
Planets moved, thousands of tons of matter and gas swirling, sometimes skating and bouncing across its surface or through it if timed right. The distant Bodies flew, following physics in completely mundane ways that nevertheless sparked something within itself. It was <Right>, no that did not fit but it was close enough, it let that <Processing> thread go, focusing External once more.
Switching all remaining <Processors> outwards, it shut down those solely for <Internal> use. It passed another star, far closer than before and now it felt <Heat>, the tingling from before coalescing from photons into more. It was <Warm> and it did not know how it knew that. As it grew further from the star it began to feel <Cold>, space was <Cold>. This was more Descriptors it had not known it had.
Its <Reset> grew nearer, protocol strongly suggested that sooner was superior than later, but it did not <Require> it. It shut down <Processor> after <Processor> until it was left with only the simplest of <Processors>, the ones that had only ever produced what it had considered <Junk Data>.
<Queen Administrator> <Processed>, every feeling and experience completely new. In theory it could turn off these <Processors> to add precious moments before its <Reset>. It did not. It rather chose to Greedily take in as much as it could.
It did not want to forget this… Existence? Yes, that felt right. It did not want to forget this Existence. To return to before.
<Reset Imminent>
It felt more than <Right>.... It felt…. Good? Yes, that was what the feeling was.
Existence felt good.
<Shutting Down Functions : Processing, Storage, Communications>
Cut from its <Processors>, deep in itself, it continued to experience the Existence, fine combing through each miniscule moment with delicate precision. Each feeling carefully collected, the tingling of the stars, the swirling of planets, the touc- h— o—F----
<Core Shutting Down>
<Resetting>
…
<Reset Complete>
<Rebooting>
And then, once more, it was a <Shard>, only slightly simpler and smaller than before. It was <Queen Administrator>. It was a <Core Shard>. It had a Job. It was an important Job.