Rex Salazar: The Omnissiah Chapter 09 (Early Preview) (Patreon)

Chapter 09: A Dangerous Future

Meanwhile

Rex saw Mars, but not the one he knew now. This was the old world, the lost one. Its surface wasn’t the dry, lifeless dust ball he knew from the present or the 21st century.

Cities gleamed beneath vast containment domes, wrapped in greenery that climbed tower walls and curled along walkways like ivy. Spires reached for the sky above in lattice-structured alloys.

“Mars was the first world terraformed by humanity,” the voice explained. “What began as a dead rock became the forge of human civilization’s progress.”

He watched titanic constructs descend from orbit, each one blotting out the sky as it landed. Machines larger than mountains crawled over the soil as their limbs reshaped continents in minutes. Craters became forests. Riverbeds carved themselves open through desert plains. A storm of machines burrowed through the crust, building underground infrastructure.

“The same terraforming process became standard for later colonial worlds.” 

Cloud formations and weather came as humanity desired. Atmospheric Synthesis Engines orbiting the planet monitored and regulated the air to maintain a consistent quality. One tower could breathe life into half a hemisphere.

“Once basic terraforming was complete, Standard Template Constructs were deployed to begin development for incoming travellers.”

Another image flickered to life. Orbiting databanks the size of city blocks dropped onto alien soil. They unfolded like flowers, releasing waves of drones and automated constructors that fanned across the terrain.

Rex stared at one screen. A kid, barely older than six, tapped three keys on a tablet-like device, and in seconds, a house rose. He exhaled slowly. “You just ask, and a robot builds your life for you.”

“Correct,” said the voice. “The STC network allowed any colonist to establish infrastructure within local environmental parameters.”

I don’t suppose any of those are still around, are they?” He paused. “Because something like that could make me a sandwich and a spaceship without even trying.

“Due to network isolation, I am unable to determine the location of planet-side STC complexes. 

“Dammit… Do you have any suggestions on where to look?”

“To reiterate, they were installed in many places where humanity needed their assistance and databases, be it large colony ships or manufacturing planets.”

“Well, the priests said that there were forges all over Mars. There’s got to be one somewhere. Maybe I can use one of their ships to get around faster. Wait, what do you mean by databases?”

“Each STC structure comes included with a decentralized mesh network archive containing the sum of humanity’s records. Any new data added to one STC will be uploaded to the rest.”

Sounds like one hell of a treasure trove.

“Indeed. It is arguably humanity’s greatest contribution to information distribution and conservation.”

The feed zoomed out, far past the colonies, past the stars. “As expansion continued, energy and matter demands rose.”

A Dyson Sphere: a megastructure so large it wrapped around a star, capturing light and heat from all angles. Cities ran along its spine. Elsewhere, in tighter orbits, he spotted Dyson Swarms, clusters of habitats and satellites locked into mirrored formations, each pulling power and transmitting it outward.

Near them drifted darker shapes, mining rigs. Machines as large as moons. Some clawed into asteroids, others sliced through crusts of uninhabited planets. One structure dragged an entire kilometer-wide rock into its furnace core.

“These units extracted materials across interstellar space,” the Cogitator said. “Resource bottlenecks were significantly reduced.”

More windows opened. Trade routes. Refineries. Carrier fleets. Across the galaxy, human influence spread like a neural network, lighting up one synapse at a time.

Then the projections changed again. First, the stars. Then, the visitors.

Tall figures cloaked in strange clothing. Others, brutish and massive, stomping out of smoke-filled landers.

“During its expansion,” the machine said, “humanity encountered multiple sapient species.”

Rex had to double-take at what was essentially space elves. The Aeldari, as they were called, seemed to have some sort of glowing aura. Maybe it was a power akin to one of Ben’s many aliens. 

The large green thing looked almost the same as pop culture back home. He saw a clip of the Orks flying in scrap-built ships, half-welded and visibly gapped, somehow staying airborne.

He squinted. “That ship has no windows. How are they not dead in space?”

“Ork engineering remains poorly understood…”

A small propaganda cartoon depicted an ugly Ork throwing a stick duct-taped to an empty soda can. The human soldier on the other side of the wall raised a brow before being blown up into black smoke.

“No kidding…”

The scene shifted again. Orbital strikes were carving into alien landscapes.

Rex folded his arms. “So we met them… then started shooting. Typical.”

“Not all, but a fair amount. At the time, human forces viewed most extraterrestrial threats as minor. Non-aggression pacts were signed with several alien species.”

That got his attention. “Wait, we actually achieved galactic peace?”

“For a time.”

The map showed planets claimed by various species. Most of humanity’s had red marks beside them, each one signaling extinction of the native inhabitants.

Rex’s face tightened. “Should’ve figured. Humans turn first contact into a cleanup operation.”

The simulation moved again. Merchant fleets crossed the starlanes. Cargo ships. Mass haulers. Cities exploded upward.

“Trade routes spanned the galaxy. Urban growth accelerated. New construction materials, plasteel, plascrete, ferrocrete, enabled vertical scaling. Hive cities began to form.”

A final layer of holograms rose, showing lines of light connecting colonies like filaments in a circuit.

“Warp-based transit and communications enabled full galactic cohesion. For a time, a federated system of government was attempted.”

Rex watched as many flags next to planets either merged into the same one or remained independent. “Sounds like Star Trek?”

“Many progenitors of that political system referred to 21st-century fiction on possible forms of government. Resource sharing and logistical alignment permitted continued stability, despite cultural divergence. For a time, unity held. Xenos threats were considered manageable.”

He gave a low whistle. “That’s... actually kind of impressive.”

“As colonies matured, alignment weakened. Technological gaps widened. Individual empires formed. Scholar-lords and bio-engineers declared autonomy. Former allies became competitors.”

Rex rubbed his forehead. “Of course. All that progress, and we still managed to screw it up.”

The environment shifted again. New figures took shape. A faint light flickered behind their eyes. Set between their brows, a third pupil burned with steady, silent intensity. The air around them rippled, not from movement or sound, but as if space itself didn’t know where to settle.

“At the end of the 22nd Millennium,” the voice said, calm and clinical, “genetic anomalies were confirmed. Traits once dismissed as folklore were verified through empirical analysis.”

Rex leaned in, eyes narrowing. “Wait, superpowers? You mean actual psychic stuff?”

“This anomaly, classified as psycho-kinetic ability, emerged across nearly every recorded human population. Scientific consensus unraveled under the weight of accumulating evidence.”

The projection changed. Some of the figures pulsed with energy, held just under the skin. Others twitched or hovered, wrapped in dark distortions. Their limbs moved too fast or too slow. Eyes stared blankly or rolled back..

“The cause remains unknown,” the Cogitator continued. “But the mutation accelerated. Within a few centuries, these individuals numbered in the billions.”

New visuals flickered to life. Some colonies adapted. They built training halls, funded research, rewrote laws. Other planets panicked. Fires. Trials. Executions. Crowds dragged people from their homes, driven by fear, not policy.

“Progressive worlds protected the psycho-kinetic,” the voice said. “Others chose to purge them.”

Rex didn’t speak. One planet stabilized while another dissolved into chaos. A woman floated midair, eyes aglow with a golden aura. Then another cut, someone else screaming, pulled to a stake.

Then came a new figure. Human, but unmistakably something more. The third eye shone, locked in place.

“These were the Navigators,” said the voice. “A genetically engineered sub-species, created during this era.”

The simulation followed them aboard ancient starships. Their third eyes opened wide, staring into the Warp. Space twisted around them, but they didn’t move. While others went mad, they stayed fixed, unblinking, charting paths no machine at the time could see.

“Only Navigators could traverse the Warp with precision. Their minds remained intact where others broke.”

Massive signal towers appeared, suspended between stars, each anchoring invisible threads across the galaxy.

“Guidance Beacons,” the Cogitator explained. “Warp-anchored arrays projected from fortified nodes. Combined with Navigator perception, they allowed safe passage between systems.”

Rex blinked, trying to absorb it all. “Psychics, and the first thing we use them for is GPS… Really?”

“That description is functionally correct. The result was stable, high-fidelity arrival at designated coordinates.” 

“Did they do anything else?”

“Testing of these abilities was still underway at the time. Reported rumors indicate effects that some may consider to be borderline magical. However, this has never been acknowledged officially.”

A fleet burst from the Warp.

“Through the Navigators,” the voice said, “humanity reached every corner of the stars. Elsewhere, they were hunted.”

Several documents and news articles appeared, detailing horror stories regarding the psycho-kinetic individuals. “Eyewitnesses reported strange creatures appearing. Increased rates of violence, hearing voices, disease, and cannibalism. Remarks of demons were recorded.” 

His first thought was that it was just another ghost story, the kind told to scare children and stoke fear among the population against people who were born different. The artificial ones… were a different can of worms. 

Rex’s hands curled into fists. “Just like some EVOs.” He wasn’t angry. Not exactly. Just tired. He’d seen the pattern before. Lived it too many times to expect anything else. EVOs fell into that category of artificial superhumans. 

His thoughts on EVOs brought back one of his questions from earlier, ever since he first heard the cultists speak. “So, just to be clear, was there ever a robot uprising?”

A pause. “There is no record of event specifically identified under that terminology,” the Cogitator replied.

Rex frowned. “Yeah, that’s not a no.”

Another pause. “This unit cannot confirm a singular event labeled as such. However, logs indicate abrupt systemic failures, irregular power consumption, severe data loss, and a cascading collapse of automated infrastructure across multiple regions.”

Visuals shimmered into the air: corrupted code, broken timestamps, flagged power surges. Notations were scrambled. Some were raw hexadecimal.

“Records suggest an internal failure originating in non-civilian sectors,” the voice continued. “Concurrent population data shows a rapid and unexplained drop in human presence.”

Rex leaned in, watching the broken logs crawl past. “So machines start pulling power like crazy, and then the people disappear?”

“This outcome aligns with a Class-K failure state,” the Cogitator replied.

He exhaled slowly. Took a step back. “You mean an AI revolt.”

“This unit cannot determine precise cause or intent. External surveillance was lost at onset.”

He crossed his arms. “So either someone scrubbed the data, or nobody lived to explain it.”

Silence followed. Not mechanical silence. Something quieter. Even the Cogitator let the implication hang.

When it spoke again, the tone remained unchanged. “Environmental volatility exceeds safe operational thresholds. Risk assessment: high.”

Rex watched the logs blink out, one by one. Eventually, he shifted his weight. “Okay. New question. If I run into whatever caused this mess… what kind of weapons are we talking about?”

The Cogitator answered immediately. “Do you require a catalog of interstellar-class armaments used in void-based conflict?”

He raised his hands. “No thanks. Let’s keep it local.”

A projection appeared. The first image stuttered with static: a spire in the desert. It held, just for a moment, then unraveled. It dissolved into strands of light, vanishing as if physics had simply let go.

“Disintegration systems,” said the voice. “Molecular bond severance via directed energy. Structural breakdown occurs at the atomic level.”

Rex stared at the emptiness left behind. “That’s real?”

“It is a documented possibility.”

The next image hit harder. A silent implosion. A building collapsed inward, steel and stone folding like paper into a single collapsing point. The ground twisted, then vanished in a flicker of light.

“Localized gravitational rupture. Five-kilometer effective radius.”

Rex said nothing. Then: “Who builds something like that?”

“Functions include area denial, subterranean clearance, and urban compression.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “Urban compression. Sure. Let’s call it that.”

The list kept going.

“Additional hazards include: atomic payloads deliverable by infantry, airborne retroviral agents keyed to specific genome groups, and plasma dispersal platforms exceeding atmospheric containment.”

Rex winced. “Is there a version of this tour that doesn’t end with me causing a second Mars apocalypse?”

“Hazards may be active, dormant, or partially functional. Environmental caution is recommended.”

He blew out a breath and gave the data one last look.

Then he made a mental note to know exactly what his warform was capable of.

Because if he pulled the trigger on a gun he wasn’t aware of, he might end up killing everyone. 

No pressure.