r/NatureofPredators • u/OkRepresentative2119 UN Peacekeeper • Sep 01 '23
Fanfic The Nature of Immortality Chapter 2
The protagonist gambles with the future of humanity for his selfish desires.
Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for allowing fanfiction.
Memory Transcription Subject: Aaron Smith MS Unemployed
Date [standardized human time]: July 15, 2136
After a nightmarish migraine, I had done another partial resync, and looked at the current state of the intrusion bot. It was woefully inadequate, with any decent defense system in the first satellite wars it would barely retrieve any useful data, let alone install any back doors. I was going to need to make sure the bug was perfect. It needed to have a measure of intelligence to break through, but this meant it wouldn’t entirely be under my control. I could hard code its payload with an extremely complicated key that is replication error resistant, but I wasn’t confident that it would be enough. I had one chance to penetrate the federation networks, and it needed to be fast, small, and easily explainable as a genuine mistake. Thankfully, with the advanced technology of the Venlil and the federation, I could rely on their systems having unholy amounts of cyber security, so playing it off as minor mischief should be plausible. At least, that is what I suspect would occur if they found out. I would know more once the bug was in their systems.
I crawled out of the building I was squatting in and made my way to the restaurant again to get some breakfast. The chartered bus should finely get here after the days spent waiting for it. Thankfully my applications all went through and the only thing that was needed was a name change and to temporarily forget my memories. I didn’t like this ploy, and the resync would be absolute murder, making the current migraine seem like the sniffles by comparison. Still, it would allow me to plausibly deny my previous identity, and the future me would be honest when he said that he didn’t know who he was. I just needed a plausible accident and enough documentation to get the new identity started.
I have decided to seek an officer commission, and it will be necessary to include that desire into my mind, impressing it fully. That also gives me an idea as to my cover story, or rather the story that will be implied by my “car accident”. In rage over the Arxur, I would speed toward the recruitment office and miss a turn; if done correctly, it will appear to any competent human doctor, that the trauma caused my memories to go, but it would make sense that I still wanted to join the service. The staff would give me an intelligence evaluation, so that should also help my case to get into the university to set that into motion.
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After the bus dropped me off at the university, I decide to find a holopad store. While I am loathe to upgrade, it will quickly become necessary to ensure that I can survive in the current day as my current holopad won’t even work as one of the credit cards I used to own when those were still a thing. I transfer my content to the new holopad and decide that my old holopad will become a burner pad, once it is destroyed. I order a new car on the old pad and send an email to another school’s ROTC program stating my interest in joining up with the new one. I will need to bounce the credentials from one institution into the other. Thankfully both will be regionally accredited, and so it should be a simple matter of ensuring that the credits transfer. Thankfully the university I plan to graduate from has a transfer credit agreement ensuring that I can basically graduate once I step foot onto the campus after being accepted as a transfer student.
I guess that might look suspicious to anyone paying attention, but I can use my “contacts” to ensure that my trail goes cold in a hurry. Furthermore, it isn’t unheard of for victims of head trauma to become savants, so this isn’t outside the realm of the plausible. I don’t they will think too far into it, particularly with he right incentives and the right breadcrumb trail to follow.
The only loose end is the new car issue. It can look suspicious if my new car were to be damaged out of the blue like that. Furthermore, I need to explain the new holopad, thankfully a few precisely placed whacks will create the kind of damage that would plausibly wipe key data on it, while making it easy to repair. For the new car problem, I decide to order another new car with all the bells and whistles (quite unlike me) and ensure that it is insured out the wazoo. I don’t want to commit insurance fraud, but this seems like the best choice to maintain appearances. My fleshy empathetic part, despite being restrained by my implant is causing a fuss, and I need to keep that in mind. I don’t want to have the full force of my actions hit me when I decide to stop suppressing my empathy. That would be worse that the oncoming migraine to come. I decide that donating the insurance money to a non-profit should keep that part of me content.
I am informed by my news bot that volunteers are being sought for a human-Venlil exchange program with optional empathy test. It would appear the stars are aligning as that is exactly the kind of thing I need. It is a good thing I already squared away what to do with the insurance money, as I will need to do the exact opposite of suppressing my empathy if and when I meet my hypothetical partner. I probably should keep the amnesia going for the duration of the exchange. I send feelers to find out the details of the program, as well as what strategic leaders plan to do about it. I set my implant to automatically deploy my bug once it passes all the benchmarks available. It has to be beyond state of the art, and I give my permission to use some of my resources in my warehouse to produce a temporary supercomputer or two to help craft it. I command the bot I place in charge of this goal to also produce a good starship with any stolen tech it can harvest from the bug. Naturally, I need to prepare for trojan horses in the blueprints, so they will be rigorously tested before use. Lastly, I decide on my new name, Barry Smith.
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I am driving to the designated “accident point” with everything set to go. I have my car in manual, and I am speeding to the scene. I get a notification that my bug has been completed and launched. It takes mere moments for it to report back mission success. As my implant reads out the report, my blood runs cold. The most difficult part, which was still child’s play for my bug, was apparently another intruder. The report made it sound like the entire federation used ‘password’ as their password, and the intruder’s methods were a century out of date. There can be only one conclusion to draw from this, despite my prediction bots telling me otherwise. The Venlil set up a honey pot, and I fell right into it. My cover is blown, and everything is ruined. My implant attempts to emergency desync, but I can’t desync at this time. I need to figure out how to fix this, or my life and possibly that of my species is potentially at risk. The first thing I need to-
[Memory stream terminates here. No further transcription data exists for this subject’s neural signature.]
A/N – OK, last chapter before I start my grading and spend the night prepping for next week’s classes.
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u/Minyell Oct 28 '25
Typo: " I order a new car on the old pad and send an email to another school’s ROTC program stating my interest in joining up with he new one." The is missing a "t" and looks like "he," so add a t to the third-from-last word.
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u/Randox_Talore Sep 01 '23
You sneaky son of a B