Chaos is in Limited Options, CILO

BC03 Revelations/19 The History of the Rogue Expedition. "You already have most of the dry facts of the early history of the group that ended up landing, and dying, on this planet. But none of it would have come to pass until Chaos is in Limited Options brought us together." You have to understand that we all held unpopular views of one sort or another before CILO approached us. Kurtherians, even of that age, regularly lived more than two hundred and fifty of your solar years. So setting aside two and a half decades of our lives so we could progress our disparate views of the inevitable outcome of the Shepherd project was perfectly reasonable. Especially since he promised to train those of us who are able to learn how to tap into the Etheric."

"It was rare for people who knew how, in those days, to teach others. There was always a worry that a warmonger would be amongst those who learned the talent. The lure of a substantially extended life was irresistibly tempting to many of us. Beyond that, he had an aura... A charisma about him that made those of us who had been shunned by so many of our own kind want to follow him." I should have realized, when he disabled the guards on the ship with one of his disrupting devices, that he was exactly the kind of person that the council feared would learn how to control the Etheric someday. They went down quietly and quickly, and he assured us that they would have felt no pain. We even delayed the launch until they were stirring, and had a chance to move away. None of us knew what he was really capable of."

"For the first several planets all we did was insert genetic improvements and additional mutation sites to speed up the evolution of the races we encountered. Then we started finding technology beyond what the ship had been equipped with. The first such technology we encountered was a rather bulky version of the nanites that those you call Weres are infused with. Larger, somewhat less capable, but still a vast improvement on the viral insertions we had been using. We reverse engineered them and their production, managing to reduce their size by adding a tiny Etheric draw on them. That version was not Bio-compatible with Kurtherians.""It interfered with how our nerves functioned. I was a genome specialist. Expert at breaking down the genetic code. That generation of nanite, once modified to have any draw on the Etheric, damaged our bodies more than it helped.

"Eventually, I noticed he was meddling with sections of genetics that the group had agreed should remain static. Increasing aggression sometimes, intelligence other times, curiosity, things like that. Also adding recessive genes for far greater size and strength, speed, spacial awareness or reaction time. He was looking for something. He had hidden from us that which he was truly seeking - a way of finding what created physical perfection. He set no limits on the risks he would take to accomplish this project. I shudder to think how many races we stunted with the methods he used. Not every planet landed on had a single sentient race after all." "When I threatened to reveal his actions to the others, he laughed and pulled one of the neural stunners on me. Soon enough, I was unconscious. I don't know how long I was senseless for at this time. Long enough for him to not only put my brain in a box, using a modified method with nanite support, but also put programming locks around me. I was unable to tell them what had happened at this time. "I realized then, far too late, that CILO was completely mad."

"So eventually, we came to this planet. Disaster struck as the Etheric generators and the ship failed. What he saw as his mission drove him to instead shield the lab. It's only because the lab was shielded that I survived. "He built this safe-hold over a decade of time. It took two years to get the replacement Etheric reactor fully online. On his first excursion exploring the surroundings he encountered a pair of modified humans, what you call Weres. The nanites they had in their bodies were far superior to the ones we were still using. I'm the one who designed the modifications to make them more... determined. I had no choice, but it is still my fault. At that point, I wasn't just his slave. I was his willing slave."

"It was only after he died, from something he could have stopped so easily, that I realized how mad he had become. Even then, for over a century, I felt superior to Gyada. But a combination of her grief at the loss of her children, and the speed with which she had learned so much of the knowledge I was willing to impart to her cracked through that. It not only enabled me to change but made me want to change.”

“The abilities he planned to give her required that the nanites to have an enormous, and constant Etheric draw. They kept her body young, without the training on how to draw from the Etheric I had received from CILO. Those nanites allowed her to survive without food or water with minimal subconscious nudges from me. They can produce anything her body needs. In time she can learn herself, but she now has food and care enough from those around her. But I was needed to satisfy her mind. I was still restricted in what I could do, but without CILO present to order me to cease and with the available time, she has an education hard to match in the galaxy. , I have access to an enormous database in the components attached to the core of my box. Every scrap of knowledge that the ship gained before and after leaving my home world is at my disposal. For the second, it took me a century to give her a solid grounding in all fields. By that time, I felt genetics had an incredible potential to corrupt an individual as a specialty. So I chose to teach her the physical sciences, even though I had little practical knowledge in them. This was a far kinder way to give her a chance at the stars."

“You don’t wish to travel to the stars again?” “I had my chance. The damage I have done… I owe you, for saving me, any aid I can give your home world. I owe you the stars. But I don’t belong there now. When I have atoned for my wrongs… If I can… Maybe.”