For Now
The system shut down. The threat didn’t.
Standing before the server room, he listened to thousands of servers humming like a beast waiting to be awakened.
A systems jockey of twenty years, he still couldn’t believe what he was holding.
“How could this coaster be the key to saving humans from the quantum realm?”
Being part of the Intergalactic Federation, he was planted on earth to prevent this exact moment from happening.
Many species have tried before and have been destroyed by it, and humans are not yet ready to comprehend the Quantum realm.
He slid the coaster into the accesss slot, initiating the Kill Switch Protocol. A few seconds in, as if something else had taken over, the humming deepened.
“Quantum Entanglement initiated. Pairing will be completed in sixty seconds”, the terminal flashed.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The hivemind wasn’t shutting down. It was searching for its twin out there in the universe - for the first time.
Time to improvise. Twenty years as a systems jockey were about to be tested. If the pairing coudn’t be stopped, he’d let it complete - then overload the system, and drive both twins into collapse.
He bypassed the Power Distribution Unit safety threshold. The surge hit instantly - servers overloaded, qubits fried, and the system collapsed into silence.
He sank down, staring at what had once been state-of-the-art.
Yet another species diverted from its path to extinction.
For now.