Free Annihilation: Book 06 - Demon's Sacrifice by Saxon Andrew Page A

it. I recommend that we scatter and scan our universe and find that other door.”
     
    “I’ve never heard of two doors.”
     
    “They are rare but they do exist. Otherwise, how did they come here? There must be another door.”
     
    The Senior Male thought about the suggestion and decided, “We should at least eliminate it as a possibility. Recall all the families from harvesting and assign them a section to search. Let’s find a way into that problematic universe and destroy it.”
     
    Another Supreme Male said, “Perhaps the universes closest to the target might have another doorway. Should we check those to see?”
     
    “Yes, send ships to scan for another entrance. If they find one, come back and notify me immediately. If nothing shows up come back and help scan our universe. Are we agreed on this plan?”
     
    Every Supreme Male voted yes and they began their search. They did not see the small, red screened, probe left behind. It listened in on their communications and once the ships began jumping out to begin searching, it jumped back to the Stars Realm and down loaded its information to Fleet Command, which passed it on to the Realm’s leadership.
     
    Sprig looked at the code from the command chamber and ran the program through an independent system to avoid contaminating the main system. It would not be a good thing to have the compulsion program loose. Edison watched the program run and suddenly yelled, “Stop it right here.”
     
    Sprig froze the data and then backed it up to the point where Edison shouted. He looked at the data stream and saw an odd line of symbols. “What are those, Edison?”
     
    “Those are encrypted on my species electrical engrams. I think those are the compulsions.”
     
    “That is a very short line of programming.”
     
    “It would have to be, Sprig. It must be transferred easily and resist degradation over eons of time. This looks like a very compact virus that rides all the other programs.”
     
    Sprig looked at the lines of the program and began to see a pattern, “It appears that the fiftieth line is where the main action is held.”
     
    Einstein looked at the line and added, “It is the two hundredth line where the virus is inserted into organic substances.”
     
    Sprig looked and did not see what he was referring. “How do you arrive at that?”
     
    “The last six symbols on the third string match up with the frequency of our nervous system. I believe that this program was written strictly for my species. It won’t work on life forms that have a different frequency.”
     
    Sprig looked closer and shook his main branches, “Whoever wrote this a genius at bioengineering.”
     
    “I agree, but it allows an easy change. Most of the rest of this virus is designed to make the host resist any emotions that might be anything other than viciousness. The finer emotions of love, happiness, and friendship are held in check.”
     
    “What do you mean easy to change, Newton?”
     
    “All we need to do is change the frequency in it and then have it downloaded again into the host. It should overwrite the previous programming and replace it. Since the frequency will be different the new download will have no effect.”
     
    Sprig thought about the suggestion, “What frequency would you use; we don’t want this program around to infect another species.”
     
    “Just choose a frequency of an extinct life form. Do you have any DNA of a species that is extinct?”
     
    “We have some from one of the planets that was harvested by your ship. That civilization is now dead, so it should only affect that now-extinct life form.”
     
    Sprig saw the sudden sadness of the three small spiders. “Don’t blame yourselves for their death children; you were forced to do it. Perhaps this will lead to some good from that loss.”
     
    “I know, Sprig, but we feel the terrible shame of what we’ve done.”
     
    Sprig looked at the records in his main system and after