Ch 17

EVOLUTION COMPLETE

Overmind Lv 2

Health – 200/200

Mana – 500/500

Abilities:

Spawn Lair (100 Mana) – Grows a Zerg Lair at your current location (12 hours)

Burrow – (0 Mana) – Go underground; unable to move; can only be detected by sensors

Transfusion – (50 Mana) – Instantly transfer 125 health to biological unit or structure

Shapeshift – (0 Mana) – Take on the appearance of any target similar in size

Adamantium Armor – (Passive) – All physical type damage is blocked 100%

PSI Assault (1 Mana) – Casts a focused PSI attack at one enemy

PSI Storm (50 Mana) – Casts a localized storm of PSI energy

PSI Guantlet Lvl 1 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Strength increased by factor of 10

PSI Armor Lvl 1 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; All attacks do 25% less damage

PSI Sensor (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Able to detect cloaked, burrowed, and hallucinated units

Teleport Lvl 1 – (0 Mana) – Able to teleport within range of vision; full horizontal/slight vertical

Zerg Mana – 183,268,340

Zerg Supply – 1198/1,901,110

Man, I can't help but feel excited. With the evolution finished, I can't wait to test out my teleportation, especially since it costs 0 mana! I totally didn't expect that. I figured it would've cost something, but instead it's a free ability! I guess it makes sense, since Endermen can use the ability freely, and it's not like I'm trying to use an Ender Pearl without whatever makes the Endermen capable of using it without getting hurt. No, I have the ability straight from the source. This is going to be so much fun to play with!

It seems my Queens are just as excited, if the fact that they're running right behind me out of the Lair just as fast as I am is anything to go by. As a first test, I warped myself over to the side of a Lair at the farthest my eyes could see. I laughed in exhilaration. The teleport was like rushing over from where I'd been to where I am right now so fast as to be instantaneous, but to my sight it seemed just slow enough that I could see myself flying past everything. Teleporting once left a pleasant tingle all along my skin.

First test successful, now for a second test! According to the ZGA, I should be able to warp anywhere within my range of vision. Well, thanks to the Overlords and Lairs, just about everywhere the creep is is within my range of vision! Focusing on my mental map, I aimed for the far side of the island and tried to teleport over there. What a rush! It worked! I can warp anywhere I can see, no matter how I'm able to see it! This is going to be so awesome! Just for the heck of it I warp just about everywhere I can, nearly appearing everywhere at once. The rush is completely nuts! It's like all the good feelings I get from roller coasters all wrapped up into one concentrated dose! I've certainly found my new favorite activity that's for sure! Now if I only I could listen to music while doing it, that would make this absolutely perfect.

Suddenly one of my Queens popped up by my side and leapt onto me in a full on glomp. It was Joy.

"This is so much FUN!" she gushed.

I grinned and replied, "I know right? Let's play tag!"

"What's that?" She asked excitedly.

"It's a game where one person is 'it', and whoever's 'it' has to chase everyone else, trying to tag them by touching them. As soon as a person is tagged, they become 'it' and then they have to chase everyone else, including the person who just tagged them."

With that explanation out of the way, I tapped her arm and said, "Tag! Your it!"

Thus lead to the most exhilarating chase and game of tag I've ever played. Being able to warp around to anywhere within range of your sight, at a rate in which you can practically be everywhere at once, is making the game seriously epic. It also lead to an interesting discovery that the ability wouldn't let us teleport into the same spot at the same time. Always, one of us would get there first, and then the other would crash into the other, being off placed by a little bit. This is usually how we ended up tagging each other since we could all warp around. It even makes sense really. An Enderman can't warp into a wall or anything solid, and since we're solid, that means we won't be able to warp into each other in a literal sense.

Finally by day break, I stopped, huffing from laughing so hard. Almost instantly I got tagged by Rose who'd been it at the time. But I held up my hand and said, "I need a break. I'm starting to get hungry, and I've been laughing way too hard." Catching my breath, I warped over to the beach, eyeing the water carefully. While the Enderman's weakness to water had been listed under their abilities, I still wanted to make absolutely sure water wouldn't hurt us. Carefully dipping my toes into the surf, I sighed in relief when nothing happened. Turning back to my Queen's I grinned and explained what I'd been doing, and they also expressed relief at not having such a weakness.

With that, I laid back onto the creep covered sand and looked into the slowly shifting colors of the sky as the sun rose. Each of my Queens laid down next to me and I grinned. They never cease to amaze me. Even while they'd been excitedly testing out there ability to teleport before the game of tag, they were still able to spawn more drones and Lairs to spread the Creep. Even now, I have 331,396 Lairs on the way with 1,000,540 mana left. By Midday, those Lairs will have completed, and then I'll have access to even more mana. I wonder though… even if the new creep only has half a day to absorb light, shouldn't a full 24 hours for that creep give me more that that? Unless… adding glowdust to the creep doesn't affect my mana absorption at all? But that wouldn't make sense!

Turning to Asura, I asked, "Does the glowdust increase the amount of mana absorbed by the creep at all?" Asura turned to me, contemplating the question, then answered, "It does and it doesn't. The Glowdust doesn't affect the Creep unless the Creep has no access to light at all."

Frowning, I thought aloud, "That would suggest that the creep only absorbs a set amount of light though… or do I have that wrong?"

Asura answered, "The Creep produces mana by converting light. The more light, the more mana, only in this case, I think you're measuring light by it's brightness?" At my nod, she continued, "Light in this case is actually measured by the intensity of the source, and if there are multiple sources, then the light from the greater source is absorbed."

"In that case, since the moon reflects light from the sun, then light from the moon to the creep is the equivalent of light from the sun?"

"Correct."

"Heh. And to think all this time I've been getting the full amount of light possible for the Creep already. I had thought that by putting glowdust in the Creep would increase the amount of light absorbed, thus extra mana."

"That is true for the Creep under the water and in the caves. You do get extra mana from the light of the glowstone there. The Glowstone only puts out slightly less light level than the sun does, and since shadows and water dim the sun, lowering the light level, the glowdust takes over there."

Scratching my head in thought, I wondered, "In that case, would the creep absorb more light if I put a magnifying glass above it?"

"What's a magnifying glass?"

My eyes goggled at the question. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that my Queens are only familiar with everything Zerg. I keep forgetting that, even when Joy had to ask what the game Tag was earlier.

I explained, "A magnifying glass is a piece of glass that bends light, making things appear closer or further away depending on which way you look through it. Back on Earth, some kids would play with a magnifying glass by taking it outside and frying ants. The magnifying glass would bend the light concentrating it on one spot, which increases the heat of wherever that one spot is pointed at."

Asura thought a moment then said, "You answered your own question. It doesn't increase the light, it only concentrates it on one point. It wouldn't increase the amount of light, so wouldn't increase the amount of mana absorbed from it."

I nodded in comprehension. I was about to ask why, in this case, would light be blocked by water, only to remember that water doesn't concentrate or unconcentrate light at all. Water scatters light, reflecting more and more light away from the Creep the further down it goes till there's no light left to reach the creep. That would be where the glowdust kicks in. Come to think of it, particles in space would have the same effect on light, so even if I were in deep space on a planet with only stars, I'd still get roughly the same amount of light I get here thanks to the glowdust in the Creep.

It's still a little confusing though… light getting scattered away by water still gives the same amount of mana as light shining on creep within full line of sight of the sun, so in respect to that, sunlight reflected off the moon has the same strength as light straight from the sun. That makes sense, but what about the particles of light that come from brighter, but further away stars? Does distance play a factor?

Voicing this line of thinking to Asura, she responded, "Would one instant ray of light from a brighter star give more mana than light from a less brighter star that is a constant source?"

Good point that. I nodded answering, "I understand now. Thanks."

Asura smiled back and responded, "Your welcome."

Relaxing further on the beach, I pondered the teleportation technique's other odd rule. Supposedly you can only go horizontal fully and only partially vertical, but if you're out in space, how would that work? What about right now? Laying down like this technically puts the sky as horizontal to me. Does that mean depending on whatever direction is directly in front and behind me is considered horizontal?

Focusing on a point in the sky, I tried to apply this reasoning and teleported. Next thing I know, I'm miles up in the air, and I'm flailing around since I'm now quite quickly falling back to the ground. Calming myself as best I could, I forced myself to try and flip over so that I'm falling belly first, then spread out my arms and legs to slow my fall. I contemplated how I'm going to get down without ending up making a crater. At first I considered teleporting back to the ground, but I'm not sure if I'd still be maintaining the speed I'm at right now. Unfortunately the ground is getting far too close for comfort, and I'd rather not test out how well my armor handles high impacts, even if in theory I should survive the fall just fine. Quickly, I teleport back up into the sky, only to find to my surprise that once I'd gone back up, that my momentum had halted. A teleporting ability that arrests momentum? That's like a blatent F-you to physics!

Slowly falling back down once more, I notice through the connection that my Queens are panicking wondering how I'm going to get down safely. Quickly, I teleport back down to the ground since I now know that nothing will happen. What did happen though is now I'm face down on the ground, wondering if I'd been wrong and I'd actually hit the ground at high speed after all. Nothing hurts though, except for my nose.

The next thing I know, I'm being flipped over and being hugged and checked for injuries by my Queens. I smiled, and soon enough they seemed to feel relief, though now some of them are getting angry. Asura in particular.

"What was that? Couldn't you have found a safer way to test if you could pull what you just did off? If everything hadn't worked out, you might have died!" Asura continued in this vein, until she finally wound down. At that point, I drew her into a hug and said gently, "Thank you for caring." Asura sighed and said, "At least warn us next time?" I nodded and said, "That's fair. We should definitely test this out. To be honest, I wasn't sure it would actually work, but since it does, this circumvents the inability to travel vertically rather nicely."

My Queens nodded, and we spent the rest of the morning practicing traveling around with our teleportation ability. Being able to go up into the sky in particular, combined with the rush teleportation already has, made the experience even more exhilarating. Maybe once I get a Cerebrate, I can have it alter the ability to allow full vertical teleportation. As it is landing on your face just to get to ground is kind of annoying. We did try experimenting to land on our hands and knees, but it wouldn't work. I guess that somehow still counts as horizontal to the horizon somehow, rather than the sky. What would also be nice is if the cerebrate can also allow us the option to choose if we maintain momentum after the teleport or not. Flinging myself through the sky just sounds like too much fun not to try it. As it is, right now we're stuck going up a certain height, then twisting ourselves around so that we're horizontal to the horizon to go any length of distance. All in all, it's really kind of annoying.

After a time, my stomach finally growled loud enough for me to notice, and I landed myself back on the ground to get some creep. My Queens landed around me doing the same. My hunger satisfied for now, I contemplated a few things. Eating reminded me of the apple juice I'd made those few nights ago, and wondered if I could recreate anything else from Earth. All in all, there's quite a few things I miss. Food alone has a vast variety of things that I miss. With a start I realized that if I don't find Earth, I might never eat a Reeses ever again, let alone any of the other stuff I kinda took for granted while I was there.

Like the music. I'm a big music fan, and I listen to music all the time, but now I've gone two weeks without it. I miss listening to my music. I wonder if I could find some way to recreate it through the Zerg… although I don't see how, it's a nice though anyways. Staring out over the ocean, I couldn't help but start to hum to myself. Of all songs I could've picked though, I picked to start humming Weezer's Island in the Sun. Too bad I can't remember the words all that well… In fact I can't remember how the song goes! I've been humming the beginning of the song over and over for the past few minutes. How embarrassing. I switched tunes to Jason Mraz's 'Lazy Song'. I can't help grinning whenever I think of this song.

Before I got very far though, Joy interrupted me asking, "What is that?"

I turned to her and asked, "What's what?"

She gestured with her hand towards myself and said, "That sound your making."

I answered, "Oh! I'm humming. I miss the music I used to listen to on Earth. I was just thinking about it and started humming the tune to a song that I like."

Surprisingly, I now had all the Queens as Snow asked, "What's music?"

I seriously had to sweatdrop at the point. How do you explain music exactly?

"Music is… music is sound… making sounds that are pleasing to hear, that are usually set to a single rhythm, and has a melody and even harmonies."

"What's a melody?" asked Rose.

"Er… well, a melody is… it's a set of notes that fit together, sounding good together. Harmonies is when you sing two melodies together and they sound good together."

Even Asura seems interested and asked, "Can you give us an example of music?"

I nodded, and after thinking a moment, I settled on a song, "Alright I'm going to start off with something simple. The song is called, "Row Row Your Boat."

I sang it for them twice, letting them hear the melody, and had to grin at the various looks of concentration on their faces. If you'd told me two weeks ago I'd be teaching Zerg Queens music I'd have wondered what you were smoking.

Joy had a small smile on her face and said, "That song sounds fun!" Then she sang it herself, amazingly with perfect pitch too. All the other Queens jumped in and I had to reel my jaw in at the realization that they ALL have perfect pitch! Either that or they just have the greatest ears for music I've ever heard, which wouldn't surprise me considering I have the same thing. I can sing any note, and even harmonize to stuff on the fly so long as I'm using my voice as my instrument. I wonder if they got it from me?

Grinning, I taught them about rounds and pretty soon we're having fun singing Row Row Your Boat as a round. After a bout of this, I laughed and said, "Alright, you've got melody and harmony down, now Rhythm. The single most obvious rhythm is the march of time. Each second as it passes is a rhythm. It never changes and stays the same. Each second has 60 beats per minute, or BPM. If you sped up the rhythm to two beats per second, that'd be 120 BPM. Most really fun songs are set in the range of 160 BPM." While I explained this, I did my best to give examples of each rhythm, though I can't be sure if I'm exact or not. I don't have a watch or anything after all.

"Now the way rhythm fits into music is pretty simple." That said, I sang Row Row Your Boat again, but this time I tapped the rhythm out on my knee, and my Queen's eyes lit up in recognition, finally getting it. Nodding, I said, "Now, that's basic rhythm. In music, the person who usually keeps the rhythm is the drummer, but just keeping that simple rhythm gets boring. That's where dividing the beat up gets fun. Asura, give me a good rhythm. Just pat your knee."

Asura started out with a good rhythm and I nodded, saying, "Keep that rhythm up. I'll show you what you a little of what a drummer can do within a rhythm while still keeping it." Closing my eyes, I started drumming my knees in time with Asura before slowly but surely making the drumming further and further complex, having fun with it. After a few minutes of this, I smiled and opened my eyes, looking each of my Queens in the eyes and asked, "Understand?" They each nodded, Joy especially. I can see a budding musician in that one especially.

Smiling, I told them, "Music is one of the most versatile of the Arts. Just about any sound can be used in music if you put it to rhythm and give it a melody. On Earth, there are many ways to create music. Just some examples of these instruments of music are the voice, you can drum on just about anything, breathing through tubes and shells can produce sound that can be put to melody, strumming taught strings can produce sounds that can be put to melody. There are so many various instruments, hundreds even, and that was before humanity learned to synthesize music with electronics."

"Synthesize?" "Electronics?" Faye and Asura asked at the same time. I had to sweatdrop there. My Queens really know nothing outside of the Zerg, in fact I had to wonder… "Do you girls know how to read?"

"What's that?" Asked Joy. I really did sweatdrop at that. They can do large number math in their head, yet don't know how to read. Strange doesn't even begin to describe this situation. I figure if I have to start somewhere, I should start with reading. Now what to use to write? I'd use the sand, but the creep is covering it. Casting about with my minds eye, I found a spot where the creep hadn't spread yet and stood up and told my Queens to follow me.

Teleporting over to the spot, I directed a Lair to fire a spine near us and I used it as a writing utensil to draw them symbols in the dirt. I explained about the symbols themselves, starting with math since that's something they know. I showed them the symbols for the numbers themselves and how to do math that way. Then I spelled out the entire alphabet, naming the letters and the sounds each make, then spelling out there names using it. I explained that since humanity doesn't have mental connections like we do, this, other than talking, is the basis of their communication. By the time I'd finished, the sun hung low in the sky, and at this point I wished I could just open up my head and dump my knowledge in their brains. It's not like they're not learning. They're actually quite good students, picking up everything I told them rather quickly. It's just the sheer amount of what there is to teach them is extremely daunting.

With reading and writing well under way, I elected to take a break and headed back to our Lair. Asura then asked, "Can you teach us about Electonics and what synthesizing music means next?"

I nodded and said, "Yes, in a few minutes." With that I leaned back against my nearest Queen and soon enough I found myself in a pile of warm bodies, relaxing my brain. After a while of this, I spoke from the center of them about electronics. I explained about atoms and electrons first off, which they thankfully knew about already. I explained that humans had found out how to force electrons to move from one atom to the next in a successive line, creating the energy electricity, which is the same way that lightning works. I explained how humans found a way to translate the presence and lack of electricity to an on and off state, and through this, they were able to assign symbols to this, and then symbols were based on these that grew even more and more complex, being capable of doing more and more things.

I explained how this became the process of programming, and how humans found a way to express sound using a hyper sensitive drum much like the one located within our own ears that absorb sound waves, translate that into electrical signals that our brains process. I explained that a speaker is basically the opposite of this, and how with speakers, music could by synthesized since the sound coming from the speaker isn't actually from the original instrument that produced the sound. I explained how after that point humans figured out how to electronically alter the sounds themselves until they sounded unlike anything that you'd hear naturally in the world, and those sounds became new instruments to create music with.

They followed along, absorbing everything I said, and with their questions, they basically picked my brain apart throughout the night, learning more and more until we were interrupted by the ZGA at midnight.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 500/500

Zerg Mana – 1,000,540/1,000,000,000

Zerg Supply – 1298/3,629,240 (0 pending)

Units:

1 Overmind

1079 Overlords

101 Drones

11 Speedlings

6 Queens

100 Hydralisks

Structures:

725,848 Lairs (0 pending)

1 Spawning Pool

2 Evolution Chambers

1 Hydralisk Den

1 Roach Warren

1 Baneling Nest