When you gaze long into an abyss...

[Slipknaut]

„Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.“

“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.â€

[Slipknaut]

It was another couple of weeks before the Empress brought the topic up again. Julius was used to this – she was always very slow in planning; methodical, with a sudden and deliberate execution. She liked to linger, he suspected, on the anticipation – which of course was the direct opposite of everyone else he had encountered from her species. Yet another one of her unsettling quirks.

“So, Julius – if an organic, who, hypothetically, is me, should desire to achieve an inorganic yet sentient state, how should they go about it?â€

[Arizona Nova]

How do you describe the passage from man to machine? From flesh to – for lack of a better word – nonflesh? Yet, in the end, is there that much of a difference? Are the contrasts we see more arbitrary than we would like to believe, or not; as in the end, do we all not have the same goal – growth, expansion, learning, domination?

In the end, does the fruit fall that far from the tree?

History, I have no doubt, will probably look without favor upon this. My suffix will probably be “the Mad,â€

[Arizona Nova]

A year passed. Anikar did not sit idle, however – she began laying the groundwork for plans whose execution would come to fruition long after the process was complete – an intimation to defense contractors for the need of large, cheaply produced ground forces, blueprints for new vessel designs, and a master plan for another bout of expansion down the Perseus Arm – one that would make the First War of Expansion pale in comparison. There was good reason of course – the circumstances of that far off time had only sharpened, especially due to its essential, ultimate failure to deliver what it promised. That, and a possible pruning of extraneous colonies and functions would help reassert the presence of the Empire, and her own power and dominion, in the galaxy. Julius meanwhile continued to study and catalogue the patterns of her mind, sending the digisent parents a steady stream of functions by which to fuse the queen’s mind with their embryo mainframe. It would fit like a glove.

Finally, one day Julius appeared in her quarters on the Fist.

“Greetings, my queen,â€

[Arenumberg]

This thread delivers.

[Arizona Nova]

You know, it is *not* my fault that the switchover ate the posts. If you're looking for the full RP you should be looking on ESUSWiki anyway.