Ch 26

Making my way back down to the surface, I gave orders to my Queens to keep spreading out the Creep, including here, but not where it might be visible. I'd have just suggested on turning the entire lot of creep and Hives invisible to hide it, but for some reason invisible creep doesn't absorb light to convert to Mana, which is why I never tried it back on Minecraftia. That particular discovery was a more recent one though in the days, or was it weeks, leading up to the fourth evolution.

I decided to follow Jake around, considering he's practically the main protagonist of the movie. I also did a bit of sneaking around the command center trying to see if I could figure out through overhearing where Earth might be. Unfortunately no one really talked about it. I guess it makes sense though. Discussing where your home planet is when everyone you talk to probably already knows where it is just seems silly, so no luck there.

No ships were coming or going to any particular direction either. At the rate this is going, I'm probably going to have to stick around until Jake sends the other humans packing back to Earth. In the meantime I suppose I should try and help out when possible. A lot of people died in that last battle after all. If that could be avoided this time, it would all be of the good.

Actually… there's an interesting thought there. What if I could somehow mediate between the Na'vi and the humans to allow peaceful coexistence? To do that though, I'd have to remove the underlying problem, which is the current mining method of the human race. Explaining to the Na'vi what the humans are there for does little good if they're going to be absolutely pissed when they find their home has been strip mined. Not to mention I'm fairly certain that the Unobtainium, a stupid mineral name if there ever was one, is the very reason that the trees were even able to become a world size biological computer in the first place.

Unfortunately, I don't have any viable methods to replace their mining operations in the first place anyways, since my Zerg either strip mine or suck the minerals straight out of the ground. No, the only thing for it is to put a halt to the mining here. I'm pretty certain the whole of humanity isn't going to like that though. Actually, thinking about it now, considering the level of tech this version of humanity is at, and the fact they even have a mining base out here with buildings that are capable of either generating or converting the atmosphere outside to be breathable for humans… that's almost a guarantee that humanity probably has a wide range of colonies throughout their solar system, if not additional colonization sites located throughout this corner of the galaxy.

It's one thing to piss off a planet with a few outlying mining operations. It's a whole different ball game to piss off a budding galactic super power. The only reason I'm not too worried is that this version of humanity is still only a sub light race, otherwise Jake wouldn't have had to spend six years asleep while their ship made the trip here to Pandora. No matter how you cut it, a warp capable race is always going to have a serious tactical advantage over a sublight race, to the point of the latter challenging the former being laughable.

Granted, my Zerg only just recently became warp capable, but it's still a huge leap in tactical advantage. Add that to the fact that my Zerg are impervious to physical damage, can become undetectable to anything that 'sees' the visible and invisible light spectrum, can teleport individually, and phase out of existence automatically if they recognize the incoming attack can actually damage them? No, I don't expect much of anything out there could take my race on. Better safe than sorry though. I'm not about to fall for the trap that is underestimating my opponents like Herobrine did.

In the meantime, my Queens are reaping the benefits of having learned how to read, and are having a field day popping around the base invisible, peeking over shoulders, reading, and generally consuming knowledge at a rate that is simply mindboggling. Better yet, everything they read is allowing me to peripherally understand all that they're learning thanks to my status as Overmind. I probably wouldn't be able to explain jack of any of it, considering so far everything they're covering is extremely disjointed, but doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to apply what they learn at the very least. Their enthusiasm is also infectious.

I watched in interest as Jake got first hooked up into the machine that would transfer his cognitive processes to that of the Avatar's. The idea of wirelessly transmitting your conscious to that of a clone's body is particularly interesting, especially as I watched the psionic side of things with my senses. I could literally see as the connection was made to the Avatar body while Jake's human body slipped into what amounts to a controlled coma. To say I found the entire process fascinating would be an understatement. Granted, as the Overmind, I'm already quite capable of projecting my own conscious to that of any of my Zerg, but to see a machine that can do the same thing without any of the psionic processes involved is simply amazing. I wonder if my Queens could learn to do something similar if they were able to study and recreate the process this machine uses?

My musings were cut short at the equivalent of a knock on the door psionically speaking. Startled, I turned my head to face the 'direction' the knock came from, despite such a metaphysical connection not truly coming from any direction unless the direction 'everywhere' counts. I suppose if I were off this planetoid, there'd be a direction, but the psionic who just knocked on my mental shields just happens to be the giant biological computer the natives call Eywa, which is by all rights and purposes, the entire planetoid itself.

Tentatively, I opened a small connection to allow dialogue, and almost got overloaded by a stream of chatter. Automatically my mind slowed the process down to a more manageable level so that I could understand what was being said. In so doing, I learned quite a few interesting things. For one, Eywa isn't a sentient, though the many natives and creatures that are 'downloaded' into its 'memory banks' are, and that collective is what had noticed I and my race's presence, and they're excited to make contact with another psionically capable race. At this point I had to stop and boggle at the fact that I'd literally just made contact with the biological equivalent of the Geth. Wouldn't that throw them for a loop if I ever introduced the two? Not that I see that happening…

Besides the sheer amount of Na'vi consciousness' located within Eywa, there's also millions, even billions, of just about every other form of life stored as a biodigital copy within its memory. It's also at this point that Eywa is in the process of informing me of the entire history of the planet since Eywa's conception (which I skimmed past rather than listen to the life of every single individual creature on the planet), it informed me on the more recent side of events how humanity came, landed, installed their base, and how for every piece of 'Unobtainium' removed from the planet, Eywa's processing power has been decreasing, resulting in the 'deaths' of hundreds of thousands of conciousness' daily.

It was at that moment my resolve firmed. I couldn't just stand by and let this happen while I had the power to do something about it, pissing off a budding galactic super power be damned. This resolve automatically translated over to Eywa, who's collective were overjoyed and were doing quite a bit of self congratulating, knowing that despite Eywa's disastrous first contact with extraterrestrial life in the form of humanity, their second contact proved to be everything they'd hoped for.

Pushing this connection to the back of my mind, I returned my focus to see Jake Sully in his Avatar form running out the door. I phased (read noclipped) through the wall to follow and watched as another scene from the movie played out in front of me. Despite having seen it already, it's still hard to believe that if I left things alone, ultimately Jake would still resolve this situation on his own, albeit with the deaths of hundreds of sentients, and non, as a result. Can I do a better job? Regardless if I do, there's no telling whether or not humanity won't just come back to finish what they started at a later date. It would've taken 12 years at minimum after the events of the movie, but I guarantee rich stupid pompous pricks aren't going to care for the rights of another race over the lining of their own pocket, since respecting the Na'vi isn't going to earn them money. Despicable.

As such, I guess Eywa gets to be my second race to be claimed under the protection of the Zerg, along with the Testificates of Minecraftia. As I start planning on how to go about with said protection, ultimately pissing off this version of the human race, I can only hope it'll be worth it.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 2500/2500

Real Estate:

7 Planets

14 Moons

0 Satellites

Zerg Sentients:

1 Overmind

6 Queens

Races Met:

Testificates – Vassal/Friendly

Ewa – Vassal/Friendly

Humans (Avatar) – Neutral/Unknown