#mark daniel martinez

[eonpresspresents]

The veil between our realities ripped, and she plummeted into our realm like a burning rose colored meteorite. Found and aided by two best friends, Jackson and Reg, she awoke with no memory of who she was or where she came from. Only what she could do, and that she didn't come from this reality. Her very essence defied all logic and laws of physics.

Immeasurably strong, impervious to harm, unfettered by gravity or friction and in complete command of every millilitre of her person, even her hair, perhaps the most amazing and incomprehensible of her abilities was a strange pink energy that she could project from her hands at will. Crystalline in appearance, the energy made a sound akin to something like wind chimes. Thus Jackson took to calling her "Crystella".

But there is darkness pursuing Crystella to our world. Something cold and indifferent to life and the whole of our reality. And if it has to destroy our universe atom by atom to find her, it will.

[eonpresspresents]

For the trillions of life forms in the Mendreb System, THE GAME is the thing. It's the only thing. THE GAME is Life. THE GAME is Death. 

 A Player in THE GAME is connected empathically through technological means to his Avatars. The Avatars are creatures or constructs that the Player has trained or programmed to operate as a combatant representing the strategic skill of the Player. 

 The Players battle in various structured formats with various rules and regulations depending on the chosen venue. But one constant remains. Gaining points adds actual days to your life. Losing points removes them. Winning is literal life or death. A literal Immortal Duel. 

 For L'ysette, THE GAME is more than life or death. THE GAME is meaning. Purpose. Existence. For her entire life, THE GAME was everything she had lost in childhood. It was friend, enemy, family and rival. THE GAME was her culture more then even the blue-skinned species she had descended from. It meant more to her, than it did to even the energy-based life forms, the Adumendreb, who had created it centuries ago. 

 It's too bad she's going to have to burn it all to the ground.

[eonpresspresents]

The Quarn were an advanced civilization of artificial intelligence who left this galaxy after gaining self-awareness. Rather than the malevolent monsters humans imagine the "singularity" becoming, the Quarn were simply not interested in organic life once it had learned as much as it was possible to know about them without observing them for millions of additional years.

The Quarn decided that they would detach themselves from the evolution of organic-kind and observe from afar. But primarily, they were interested in exploring the potential of their own existence. The Quarn consciousness developed the ability to travel vast distances, and left this galaxy to established a true intergalactic civilization of AI in a distant galaxy. The Quarn developed technology at a pace no one ever imagined. And explored the possibilities of existence no one could understand. Far too distant for the organics' technology to reach, all the civilizations the Quarn left behind could do is watch from afar and marvel.

And then one day, we looked up to the sky, and the Quarn were gone. No radio signals. No structures. No evidence that their civilization even existed. No one knew why.

As it turned out, the Quarn weren't the first AI to ever achieve sentience and spread out across the galaxy. In fact, it had happened many times. And every time, the same eventuality befell them all. The Corruption found them.

The Corruption, as its name implies, was not a deliberate creation. But a corruption of data from an advanced AI civilization billions of years ago. The precise details of its origin is lost to history, but it is believed that a highly complex corruption of data of an artificial lifeform billions of years ago was purged, but the data was sophisticated enough to have achieved its own form of self-awareness. Not fully understanding what it was, it took the destructive nature of its programming to mean it was meant to eliminate technology. So it found clever and insidious ways of circumventing even the advanced safety protocols of its progenitors and led to their rapid, overnight extinction.

And then The Corruption simply waited in data stores until other advanced technologies found it. And it destroyed them. For billions of years, the data managed to find its way into data network after data network, crippling the infrastructures of organic civilizations and annihilating all traces of the artificial ones. By its very nature, by the time you learned what it was, if you learned what it was, it was already over.

And now The Corruption is coming here. And it's already too late.

[eonpresspresents]

The Gathered is a traveller through space and realities. Their existence is not a person, as we understand it. But existence nonetheless. Sentience on a level we can't fully understand. Their suit allows them to travel to realities that possess different laws of physics than their own. They are both here. And not here. They are both present. And absent. They are The Gathered. And after an encounter with the Jonn'Qarra thousands of year ago, a miscommunication of intent will elicit an emotion inside The Gathered. An emotion unlike what you and I are capable of feeling. But can best be described in our terms....as rage.

[eonpresspresents]

Their people once nurtured mankind. But nurture soon gave way to total subjugation and cruelty. So seven Jonn'Qarra turned against their own kind to save humanity. They cast them out of this reality, but vowed to keep watch...just in case they ever found a way back. They did. And this time, everything that can go wrong...will.

[eonpresspresents]

Inertia joined Orchid in her stand against their own kind and vowed also to protect humanity from the threat they posed. Her second skin, reflecting no light, is as much a void as her past. Which is unusual for a people numbering only in the thousands and who've lived together for millennia. But after a few thousand years after the Jonn'Qarra's creation, their former lives became increasingly irrelevant. With the powerful ability to change the inertia of objects in motion, combat against Inertia is almost an exercise in futility. It would take great power to resist someone who can bend a basic rule of physics. That time might be close at hand.

[eonpresspresents]

The Jonn'Qarra are a race of people who fell to earth millenia ago. They largely appear as human as you or I and even reflect many of the same genetic traits of Earth's wide and varied ethnic groups. But the major distinction between them and us is the "second skin", which is what jonn'qarra means in their language. With the appearance of a coating of glaze, the jonn'qarra doesn't just coat the body, it bonds with it. It makes the being it joins with something new. Something unique. Something powerful. Which is why Second Skin, or Jonn'Qarra, became the adopted name of this group of beings. No two second skins look exactly alike.

[eonpresspresents]

Singularity stood with Orchid thousands of years ago when their own kind threatened humanity. Without hesitation, she once again stands with Orchid against their kinfolk. But even the unimaginable power of being able to generate matter-specific black holes might not be enough to fight the terror that awaits. It might even be used against her.