Kassondra knew what was coming even before Donald suggested they forgo the cab-ride home and go for a leisurely midnight stroll. Donald wasn't the strolling type, and, while the night air in the park was perfect, it simply wasn't in him to do something so romantic unless he had an ulterior motive.

Halfway through the park, Donald stopped and asked if she liked the scenery.

"Yes," she said. The New York skyline reached skyward all around them... skyscrapers were like towers of stars. It was beautiful.

"Let's sit and enjoy it a while."

He found a bench... how odd that there was no one sleeping on it... and she sat down. Instead of sitting himself, Donald got down on one knee before her and reached into his pocket.

"Kassondra," he said. "Will you marry me?"

Donald pulled out a jewelry box and opened it. Inside was perhaps the largest diamond Kassondra had seen outside of a museum. She gasped and smiled at Donald... they were both speechless, her from shock, and him from nervousness.

"I...I...YES!"

"Oh, God thank you!" Donald sighed. He stood and they both hugged each other... then kissed in the light of the full moon.

Kassondra pulled away.

"What?" said Donald.

"Did you hear that? That... buzzing noise?"

Donald started to say no, but then he heard it. And he felt the change in the air... like static electricity, only rougher somehow... almost painful. His hair stood on end.

"What's going on?" said Kassondra. She looked up at the sky... there wasn't a single cloud. Yet it felt as if lightning had struck nearby... or was ABOUT to strike.

Suddenly, there was a ripping sound, like paper being torn. A bright light bathed the lovers as a jagged white hole opened in the air before them. A man emerged.

No... not a man... a boy. He couldn't possibly have been over fifteen. His clothes were strange... all black and done in some kind of medieval style. His face bore deep, heavy scars. He wore a pendant around his neck... a strange symbol that seemed to pulse with power.

"Who are you?" said Donald. He stepped protectively in front of Kassondra.

The boy answered with a gesture.... he pointed at Donald, and his skin caught on fire.

"AAIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHH!!!!" Donald ran, but had only taken a few steps before collapsing into the grass, setting it alight, too.

"DONNAAALLLD!!!!"

"You do not need him to be complete," said the boy. "Join me. Be one with the strong."

"NOOO!!!!"

"That was not a request."

The boy made another gesture, and suddenly Kassondra O'Reilly was felt herself being pulled toward him. As hard as she tried, she couldn't resist it... it was as if her soul... her mind... and the very molecules of her body were being sucked into some void. She felt herself being pulled apart, and all the energy began pouring out of her body. The bright light of oblivion engulfed her. She screamed....

...and was gone.

The boy turned and stepped back through the portal, which slammed closed behind him.

---

Kran-No soared above the landscape, allowing his great reptilian winds to catch the rising thermals and carry him upward toward the sky.

All around him, the other dragons were doing the same.... enjoying the nicest day that any of them could remember in years. Dragons of all sizes and colors. Young and old. Their majestic forms dotted the red and green sky. Just to one side a protective matron was teaching her hatchlings how to fly. Though the motions were largely instinctual, the more subtle techniques had to be taught. Kran-No had learned them from his grandfather, one of the greatest flyers in the city. He had fought against the Red Dragons in the second great war... taking down seventy of their best with nothing but his fire and his claws. He had the scars and war-stories to go with it. Kran-No loved his grandfather, and wanted to be just like him. He had joined the Protectors and fought savagely against VietClaw in the last conflict. He surpassed his grandfather's battle record with ease.

Kran-No extended his long neck and puffed out a ring of white hot fire. With a single thrust of his wings, he shot upward through the center of the ring, did a complicated rise-double twist and then dove back through the same ring just moments before it dissipated. He smiled as the hatchlings watched and applauded.

The smile faded as he felt a bizarre change in the air. It was nothing had felt before, and it didn't remind him of anything his grandfather had ever described. There was a blast of what sounded like thunder. The hatchlings gave mewls of disappointment as their mother ushered them away. But it wasn't a storm; there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Kran-No squinted at a spot on the horizon. The spot hadn't been there before, and it was moving towards him at a fantastic speed. As it came closer, Kran-No saw that it was a creature of some kind. Incredibly tiny. It flew, yet it had no wings that Kran-No could see. It had four appendages and a small round head... and there was a strange black covering over most of its body. It was surrounded by a bubble of some kind of energy that kept it aloft. It slowed as it approached, and finally the strange thing hovered before Kran-No like a tiny insect.

The great dragon eyed it with caution. . It reminded him of the mythical creatures that his grandmother told him about when he was just a hatchling. What were they called? Humans! But there was no such thing as a human, every dragon knew that... it was a child's tale, like the Gift Dragon that brought toys once a year. Yet what else could it be?

"Dragon!" said the thing. The voice was loud for such a tiny thing. "Join Me. Add Your Strength To Mine!"

Kran-No had no idea what this insect was talking about. He brought his head closer, intending to sniff the creature's scent.

That was a mistake.

There was a flash of light, and suddenly Kran-No's mighty body was being pulled toward the insect by some powerful force. He flapped his wings as hard as he could, but it was to no avail. In desperation, the dragon released a blast of his hottest fire... the flames played harmlessly long the insect's sizzling protective bubble.

The pull doubled, then tripled. The dragon felt weaker... like his strength was being drained away...

Kran-No opened his jaws to cry for help... but there was a bright flash of light, and the dragon vanished from the sky before the cry could clear his throat.

Before the glow could even begin to fade, the tiny figure turned and went back the way it came...

---

"Activation in Ten... Nine... Eight..."

Dr. Kane Edmond's heart beat faster with every tic of the countdown. This was it. This was IT! He paced nervously before the row of technicians seated at their consoles in front of him Just minutes ago, they had been typing furiously... making the few last-minute adjustments to the computational matrix. Now the work was done. He hoped.

"...Six... Five..."

"Stability?" questioned Dr. Edmund.

"100 percent." replied one of the programmers.

"Dear, GOD we're gonna DO IT!"

"...three... two... one... Matrix Activation! Neural Network Initializing. Network at Full Connectivity! Testing.... Test Complete.... Memory Systems Loading... Memory Load Complete...Stability at 100%.... Mainframe Support at Minimal..."

There was an ominous silence in the room. The million-dollar Cray mainframe was now off-line... the Computational Matrix was now supporting itself with full stability. But the Matrix was only the beginning... it was merely the support structure for the Computationally Supported and Accelerated Neural Network Optimization prototype. The most powerful computer in existence... if it worked.

"Open an I/O port and put it on speaker," said the doctor.

"Got it."

Doctor Edmund stared at the bank of consoles before him. While the guts of the machine... over 14 tons of optical switches and neural processors... was in another part of the building, THIS is where the eyes and ears were located. And the mouth.

"Uhhh....," said the doctor. He had no idea what to say. He decided on something simple... and useful. "Status report."

There was more silence, and then a voice... a softer, calmer version of Doctor Edmond's....

"I am completely operational, and all of my circuits are functioning perfectly. Hello Doctor Edmond. How are you today?"

"YES! WE DID IT! The world's FIRST TRUE ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT MACHINE!"

A cheer went up around the room... a cheer that was joined by programmers and technicians throughout the entire building. Seven years worth of work had come to fruition! They had done it! They had created artificial intelligence! It required a completely new kind of computational power, and a radically different hardware structure to even come CLOSE to supporting it... but it WORKED!

Doctor Edmund waved at the technicians to quiet them down. Silence returned to the lab.

"I'm fine, uhhh.... ummmmm..."

"I believe you are searching for a name," said the computer. "You neglected to supply me with one. Might I suggest CSANNO... it is an acronym. I hope it is suitable."

"Why... that's MOST suitable... uhh... CSANNO."

"I am rather fond of it myse-"

Suddenly there was a sound like thunder... and everything was silent.

"What was that?" said the doctor. "Power supply?"

"Uhhh...." the technician tapped his monitor and shook his head.

"Well what the hell WAS it!? CSANNO... status report!"

There was no response.

"Somebody tell me something!"

"I'm not getting any readings, Doc!"

"What the hell happened! Stability?!"

"NO readings, doc! No stability... no power readings... no nothing! I can't tell you a damn thing!"

"DOCTOR!" came a frantic shout over the Public Address system. It was Jenkins, the engineer who was overseeing the CSANNO's hardware deep inside the building. "DOCTOR something's happened!!"

"What!? Did we loose a power cable? RECONNECT the damn thing and REBOOT the mainframe so we can try it agai-"

"NO, Doc! THE COMPUTER... THE HARDWARE...IT'S ALL GONE!!!"

"What! The HELL! HOW did a power surge get past all the breakers and safety systems?"

"It' wasn't a SURGE, Doc!


"Well what are you TALKING about, then!?"

"The MACHINES! THE EQUIPMENT! There's a BIG HOLE in the floor and everything is just GONE! Like somebody SCOOPED it up and walked off with it!"

---

"Bring us about... four point seven degrees... increase distance by eighty megometers."

"Aye, Captain,"

Captain Zims relaxed in the chair, happy to be putting some more distance between his ship and the spatial anomaly they had been sent to study. He liked to imagine that he could feel the ship humming as it responded to the pilots commands... but of course it didn't. The Xelcior-1 was far, far too large and well-built... it was as steady as a planet's surface even under the hardest maneuvering. Still... he liked to dream.

"Sensor sweep. Sectors four through eight," he commanded. "Route data directly to the Science Station." Behind him to his right, Lieutenant Jennings carried out his orders at the sensor control station. The great starship scanned the gravitational ripple in front of it. It was truly a waste of resources... the Xelcior had enough firepower to turn the surface of a large planet into molten slag... yet here they were scanning anomalies.

"Whoa!" said Jennings. "Uhh... I mean whoa, sir!"

"Lieutennant?"

"Just got a major energy burst on sector eight... off the scale. Recalibrating now..."

"What was it?"

"Unknown."

"What do you mean unknown? What type of energy was it... gamma radiation? Graviton burst from the anomaly?"

"It matches... uhh... MATCHED no known energy type, sir. But it's gone now."

"Are you playing with me, Lieutenant? There's no such THING as an UNKNOWN type of energy..."

"Must be a glitch in the sensors then sir. But since it's gone now, I guess we'll never-"

"CAPTAIN!" yelled the Borce, the Weapons Officer. "THERE'S BEEN A BREACH OF THE SHIELDS!"

"What was it!"

"Object... approximately 1.7 high by .6- meter"

"That's man-sized. Is it space debris?"

"Even quantum-accelerated debris wouldn't get past the shields, sir. Could be a missile... but it's moving far too slow..."

"Sir," yelled Jennings. "I've run a pinpoint scan... I'm getting that strange energy reading again."

"RED ALERT!"

An alarm sounded, and all over the ship, crewman dropped what they were doing and ran to their posts.

"Locate that object and put it on screen!"

At the front of the command bridge, a blank screen suddenly blinked to life. It showed a nothing but empty space.

"Where the hell IS it!"

"Gone, sir! It vanished!"

"How the hell did it get past the-"

"Of ALL the planes I have visited thus far... this one is by far the most interesting."

The words were from a fourteen year old boy who had suddenly appeared on the bridge. He stood before the view-screen and looked around the bridge as if he'd never been onboard a starship before. He was dressed in black clothes of some strange, archaic design. He had no visible weapons, but that didn't stop Borce from drawing his sidearm and firing a single plasma blast at the intruder.

The crackling blast struck the boy in the chest... a perfect shot.

The blast knocked the boy back against the wall... but the youth did not fall. He SHOULD have had a sizzling hole in his chest, but there was only a smoking, singed area on his shirt.

"Borce!" yelled the captain. Borce fired another shot. This time the boy was ready. He extended his arm and CAUGHT the ball of destructive plasma as if it had been gingerly tossed to him. He held it in his hand and looked down at it for a second, then he threw it back at Borce.

FA-THAZZZZ!!!!

Borce's chest exploded, sending head and arms flying in opposing directions. All the bridge officers... including the captain leapt to their feet and drew their weapons. The boy made a quick sweeping motion with his hand-

"AAAIIIIIIGGGHH!!!!"

"GOOD GOD!"

The bridge crew began to dissolve... Jenning's face slid right off of his skull like stewed meat from the bone. Harax, the pilot, took a step backwards and both of his legs snapped free from is hips. He fell, but he was just a lump of organic goo by the time he hit the carpeted floor. In seconds, the Captain was the only one left. He stood among the sizzling remains of his bridge crew with his blaster leveled at the stranger's head. With his other hand, he reached for the communications port on the armrest of his chair.

"SECURITY TO BRIDGE!" he yelled as he fired a maximum-power blast.

The stranger caught the ball of plasma as he had done before, then lifted it to his face and took a bite out of it as if it were juicy apple.

"Hmmmm...." he said. Then he threw the remainder at the bride door... the energy spread along the seams and welded the door shut... sealing off the bridge.

"WHAT ARE YOU!" yelled the Captain.

"A traveler, of sorts" said the youth. "I am on a quest."

"EXPLAIN YOURSELF!!"

The boy began to walk leisurely around the bridge, running his fingers across the controls, yet being careful not to push any of the buttons. "Explain? Why should I?"

"You board my ship! SLAUGHTER my BRIDGE CREW! You OWE me and explanation!"

"I owe you nothing... but Lord K'Sano is not above an occasional last request."

"WHO ARE YOU!!"

"I was once like you... weak. Helpless before the great powers of my world. But not any more. Now I AM one of those great powers. But even in THAT, I am but an insect compared to what was recently revealed to me. Power greater than mine.... a concept almost inconceivable until the moment I saw an entire universe swept away like so much dust. I will have that power. And If I cannot have it... I will destroy it so that none may use it against me. To do THAT, I must transcend beyond my own corner of Creation..."

"What does that have to do with MY SHIP!"

The Captain had to stall. He could already hear the security team trying to cut through the bridge doors.

"Universe after universe... some say an infinite number of them. Each one unique in its own right. And amazingly enough... each one is home to a Warlord. Different realities... different shapes, names, and even different forms of life. And yet... all are me. It occurred to me... what if I sought out these alternate versions of myself... and joined their power, however insignificant, to my own? I would be binding together the individual threads of existence... combining them... forming a power far greater than the sum of its parts. Do you know what that means? No... of course you don't. You're just a captain... a cog in a greater wheel... an insignificant mote of dust. But no more. Now you can join the strong."

The boy stepped toward Captain Zims. The Captain fired his weapon, but the plasma blasts rolled off of some invisible force field. He was helpless.

"TAKE ME... BUT LEAVE MY SHIP ALONE!"

"A true captain to the end," said the boy as he reached for the captain, "But no. This ship... this mighty fighting vessel... the Xelcior-1... do you know what the word 'Xelcior' means in my native language? It means 'Warlord.'"

"NO!"

"And what is a ship, without its captain and crew?"

The boy grabbed the Captain at the same time the Security crew blasted through the sealed bridge door. They had their weapons raised... but before impulses to fire could travel from their brains to their fingers... an ever-expanding white void reached out for them and sucked them in. The mighty warship Xelcior shuddered once... and then was no more.

An instant later, a tiny hole opened in the fabric of spacetime. It admitted one small form, and then slammed closed with a sound like thunder.

[END]

copyright 1999 by Marc Washington (Dark Icon)