Thanos Receives a Visit (Fanfiction)

Thanos leans back in his porch chair looking across his recently harvested crops, in his hand is a large glass filled with pressed juices from said crop.  His face sports a lazy smile of victory and contentment however his brow shows a slight frown.  A little distance away behind Thanos sits a golden gauntlet perched upon a pole, it is covered in different coloured stones.

Just a couple of feet away from him the air starts to glimmer and twist before him.  The twist in the air resolves itself into a humanoid shape with dark blue skin wearing a grey suit.  Thanos is reminded of the Galactic Bank's staff, very nondescript and easy to forget.  The humanoid is carrying a black device in its hand, it looks down at it and taps it with one of this fingers.

"You are Thanos is that correct?" says the blue alien to Thanos, "Yes, and who might you be?" Thanos replies with slight rumble in his voice. "You can call me C9, I best get comfortable."  C9 taps the device in his hand and a chair appears in front of Thanos, C9 sits down. "Do you mind if we have a 3D transcription made of our conversation?" C9 says. Thanos just nods in agreement.

Transcription Between C9 & Thanos

Universe: LarveM-27 CQ

C9: I am here to inform you of the consequences of your recent action within this particular universe.  Would you like to disown your involvement and use of the UTs to wipe out half the sentient races in this universe?

Thanos:  I do not wish disown anything, I stand by my actions!

C9: Are you aware that the UTs were never meant to be used in such a fashion?

Thanos: UT?

C9: Excuse me I tend forget when dealing with lower races, UT stands for Universal Tool. When a universe is created UTs are used in its construction.  They are designed purely for the purpose of a creating a particular universe and cannot be used externally to that universe.

Thanos: We call them Infinity Stones and they seemed to work just fine to me.

C9: If you look really closely you will see their outer skins has become cracked which will only get worse.  However we can discuss that later, first we must cover the consequences.

Thanos: What consequences I have saved a universe of limited resources by removing half of its population.  Balance is key to any successful civilisation.

C9: My colleagues completely agree unfortunately in your arrogance you have not considered the large picture of your universe.

Thanos: Arrogance!

C9:  Yes, lower races always think they know best when in fact you know so little about the environment you live in .  Admittedly you are the first being to cause this level damage to a universe which why it was agreed you be informed personally.

Thanos: Who are you to tell me what I should and should not do?!

C9: Well this is the reason I was sent because I was contracted to create this particular universe, normally I do not returned to completed jobs but it was felt that this was a unique situation.

Thanos: Have you come to kill me then?

C9: Definitely not that is would be unthinkable, I just here to tell you what your universe's potential future is.  Let us start with something small first, just a single planet.  Let me bring it it up on the Holovision, there you go.  This planet was known to its natives simply as Mmm.  Planet Mmm was a perfectly balanced environment for its sentient race, flora, fauna and lower animals.  Each species on the planet lived in a symbiotic relationship with each other, the planet was literally paradise.

C9: Then you clicked your fingers and within nine days the planet was a barren wasteland with a few microbes living beneath its surface.  Their populations were perfectly balanced, you killed off half and the planet fell into a chaotic spiral never to recover.

Thanos: One planet means nothing in the larger scheme of the universe.

C9: Okay then lets goes larger then, have you been to the Steller-9 galaxy?

Thanos: Never heard of it.

C9: Not that surprising, it is one of the oldest galaxies in this universe.  Long before you were born, the sentient race that evolved there invented technologies that allowed them to maintain all the stars in their galaxy.  Stellar engineers of the first order, eventually each star in the galaxy became permanent homes to a single engineer.  They kept the stars is perfect balance, they added or removed matter to keep a star from exploding.

C9: Before you snapped your fingers, that galaxy was home to several trillion different sentient races, the Stellar engineers helped create conditions so that more sentient races evolved.  Without the engineers to maintain the stars well let me show you what the galaxy looks like now.  You see that dark patch in the right hand quadrant, that's a black hole created by multiple exploding stars about thirty days after you did your thing.  We have calculated it will consume the rest of galaxy in less than a galactic year.

Thanos: These are just isolated examples.

C9: I have a few billion other isolated examples and they are increasing in number.

Thanos: What will happen then?

C9: Well actually remember I told you about the cracks in the UTs?

Thanos: I thought the stones were intelligent, can't they repair themselves?

C9: Yes they are, in order to do their individual jobs they had to have a high level of intelligence.  Thing is they do not work well together your misuse of them and the fact you placed them together is a very dangerous thing to do, hence the cracks in their outer skin.  They are likely to be very unhappy to be stuck on that golden glove.  Between them they have the power to create an universe and to unmake one!

Thanos: You mean they going to explode?

C9: Not sure, we have never been in this situation before if they do then the universe will just blink out of existence otherwise the universe will continue for a short time until the chaos you created spirals the universe into oblivion.  

Thanos: How the hell was I supposed to know this happen!?!?

C9: I think you are a flaw in my design of the universe, next one we will remove the bug that caused you to exist.  Now that you have been informed that you are the destroyer of a universe I shall be going.

Thanos: What happens if I take stones off the gauntlet and send them to different ends of the universe?

C9: You forget they are intelligent and have long memories, you might appease them a little but you still have the consequences of your action to solve.  It is not impossible to fix.

Thanos: Can you fix it?

C9: Maybe but the client failed to pay his hardware maintenance this eon plus the client would to have to raise maintenance request before we could even start looking at it.

Thanos: Who is the client?

C9: I suppose you would call him God, I understand pray helps.

Thanos: Will he hear me?

C9: Unlikely clients that do not pay their hardware maintenance have larger issues to worry about than a single universe.  Time I left and let me you congratulate on being the most stupid arrogant sentient being in the multiverse to date.

C9 got up from his seat and disappeared, Thanos's frown had deepened considerably, his smile completely gone.

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 11

Ib: I wonder did I leave it in the core room.

Helper Swarm (HS): Perhaps we can help?

Ib: Where did you come from, your not the Nano-Swarm?

HS: We were created by the Nano-Swarm and you created them which makes you our

Ib: Hold on a panug! I did not create Nano-Swarm they are Grey Tech.

HS: But you are a Grey are you not?

Ib: Yes but not the Grey that created Nano Swarm tech.

HS: What are you then and why did you bring the Nano-Swarm here to this world.

Ib: Err, let us take this to a different orbit shall we.  What do you know about the Builder Paradox?

HS: Please wait, searching Grey Tech archives.

HS: This is the equation that states there should be no interstellar alliance despite the high probability of life giving planets in the known universe.

Ib: Yes that is the one however it was not always called the Builder Paradox, originally it was called the Builder function.

HS: What does the difference of the name make?

Ib: When it was just a function H-Jump tech had not been invented.  And the function made an extremely basic assumption that was never stated.

HS: And that was?

Ib: Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.  Which means all travel through this universe has a very limited velocity stopping the possibility of any intelligent species meeting each other.  It would only happen it multiple species arose in a single solar system which is astronomically rare.

HS: We understand! It became a paradox because the H-Jump was invented and Grey Tech was distributed to many intelligent species none of which have faster than light drives. And the alliance was came into existence.

Ib: Exactly and my point is your knowledge of Grey Tech is limited to what the Nano-Swarm gave you when they created you.

HS: We are given everything to survive in the lower altitudes.

Ib: What are doing up here then?

HS: Delivering Takeaways, Chinese is our specialty this cycle.  It is trending on many of the higher altitudes.

Ib: What is Chinese?

HS: It is a food created by the bipedal natives of the planet below.

Ib: You have traveled down to ground level, I thought the tech only allowed for high altitude work.

HS: Only those that fall or volunteer to fall in the precipitation end up on the ground and we have had no word from them.  However we have access to the the natives communication protocols.

Ib: You have communicated with them?

HS: No that would be a violation of Grey Tech first contact protocols.

Ib: A lot has happened in the last seventy cycles, where are their telepathic nodes?

HS: As far as we can see they do not have any or are have been dormant for so long they are no longer connected to the intelligence cortex.

Ib: How do you communicate then?

HS: S-Waves and visual stimulation, the visual aspect is how we managed to recreate their food at the microscopic level so members of the swarm can consume it.

Ib: S-Waves!  But I communicated with them when I was in the Muse of Urns.

HS: They were Haxians.

Ib: But the hostages were not.

HS: According the Grey Tech archives the nine artifacts have been sought after for thousands of cycles are you sure the hostages were natives?

Ib: How do you know about it?

HS: One of the native leaders likes to communicate everything and their communications protocols are very simple to decode.  There are no secrets from The Swarm.

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 10

Nano-Swarm (NS): Welcome to the ship, we have adjusted the holes so that you can breath air.

Ob: Holes?

NS: Yes normally the ship's mass is not completely sealed because we do not breath.

Ib: What do we call you exactly?

NS: We are called InsertNameHere, but Nano-Swarm is sufficient.

Ib: Err, right.

Ob: A bit of an odd name do not you think?

Ib: Less of the orb rolling I was busy.  What are your goals exactly?

NS: Observe and Understand.

Ob: Is there a reason your ship is at the center of an usually high concentration of radiation?

NS: Yes, when we were dropped here seventy cycles ago into the lower atmosphere there was already a build up radiation. The natives call it the South Atlantic Anomaly, we call it home.  The radiation helped us multiply at an exponential rate, as we expanded so did the anomaly.

Ob: How far have you actually expanded to?

NS: We are omnigifts.

Ib: Omni what? I think perhaps you need a communication update or two along with the power transfer.

NS: Let me clarify we are everywhere within this Solar System.

Ob: You said natives, do know which are the dominant species?

NS: That is an ongoing debate within the swarms since there many intelligent species on the planet below.  Some are completely unaware of each other hence the debate.

Ib: Wait Panug! If you are everywhere then you knew about our issue with the Haxians and I had just had an excellent idea.  Can you create a copy of our ship?

NS: Very easily.

Ib: Then do so and send it heading away on the same plane of the Haxian ship out of the system. They will be sure to follow it.

NS: That would require Command Override.

Ob: Err what is that exactly?

NS: Password please.

Ib: Ah! Well who reads the slab guides anyway?

Ob: I always read them, you do realise this swarm is...

NS: We are The Swarm not a or this!

Ob: Right, err. The Swarm is a huge source of information especially about the locals.

Ib: Read maybe understand Mmm! Fine!  I will go back to the ship and see if I can find the slab.  I will also set up a power transfer and communication update stream as well. You have fun with your data.

Ob: What do you know about the quadrupeds?

NS: It is best I direct you to a Search Panel, they will help you with your questions.

Ob: Perhaps I can just clarify a minor detail, if you are everywhere then were on our ship when we entered the system?

NS: We do have swarms at the edge however your ship's velocity and the high concentration of hydrogen stopped us from entering your craft at that time.

Ob: When did you enter exactly?

NS: When you arrived in orbit of course.

Ob: But you do not make contact?

NS: We observe and understand only.

Ob: Right. Your using Grey Communications right now, did you monitor our communications whilst we were on the ship?

NS: Internal telepathic communications are monitored how else could we understand.

Ob: Do you know how the natives of this planet communicate exactly?

NS: That will require you directing your questions to the Instruments.

Ob: What instruments exactly, there is nothing here.

NS: We created the Instruments to help us observe more especially on this particular planet.  They are also known as Helper Swarms.  We seeded them into lower atmosphere and used the native's machines that use heat exchange systems to multiply them further.

Ob: Your saying these Helper Swarms are the clouds?

NS: Only thirty six percent so far, precipitation drops their numbers.  We have researchers working on the problem.

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 9

Ob: Well the Bio Emitters turned out to be some what expensive and then I got distracted with the Trilons.

Ib: I thought the hull do not look as shiny as it should, basically you are telling me the ship is unprotected.

Ob: We have defenses I just thought out here in the middle of no space I did not think we would meet an hostile force.

Ib: And you said and I quote "Chance happens in the strangest of places..."

Ob: Nothing strange about this place.

Ib: Haxians, artifacts and a seeder ship not strange! Mmm.

Ob: Maybe the best thing to do would be to hide somewhere. Err and quickly there is a ship on the scanner.

Ib: Well Haxians are very two dimensional in their thinking I really do not how they made it into space.  Have you seen the inside of their ships it is all flat surfaces and no place to sit.

Ob: How does it help us?

Ib:  Easy drop into a lower orbit, it will take them at least a couple of rotations before they figure out where we have gone.  And by then we will have come up with a better plan.

Ob: Do you really think they will fall for that?

Ib: Only one way to find out.

Ob: One interval.

Ob: Errr there appears to be a lot of radiation here in the southern hemisphere at this altitude.  Was not this the place you dumped your beta nano swarm last time we were here?

Ib: Yes well they taking up space in the cargo bay plus they never did anything useful.

Ob: That is why they call it beta.  According to the scanner there is a central mass in the center of the radiation.  It is ten times our mass.

Ib: How close are we to it?

Ob: Hold a panug! Purple Monopods! It is coming closer at velocity.

Ib: Well if the swarm survived technically they are Grey Tech and it attracts other Grey Tech, hence Grey World.

Ob: We are getting a signal on the encrypted channel.

Ib: And?

Ob: They are requesting a power transfer and have given us landing signals.

Ib: I am not sure about this, Nano-swarms can be very needy.

Ob: It is better than hanging about waiting for the Haxians to turn up.

Ib: Fine.

Human Interlude #4

J: Mr President, NASA have reported an unknown object at the center of the South Atlantic Anomaly.

Mr President: What do they want me to do about it.  Did that space station see it?

J: NASA had to turn off the live feed again, you know it makes all the Alien Conspiracy theorists jumpy when they do that.

Mr President's Hair: yes they love feeding the trolls.

Mr President: I don't see what they expect me to do, all they ever do is ask me for money and avoid all my questions.

Mr Berg: That is simply not true Mr President, your just not suited to the answers they give.

Mr President: What does the object look like?

Mr Berg: Excellent question Mr President, shows the true scientist in you.

Mr President: What's the answer?

Mr Berg: Well apparently it was very big and black.

Mr President: Was? How do you see something black on the blackness of space exactly?

Mr Berg: It only appeared for a few moments some Youtuber caught it on the live feed.

Mr President: What you are telling me is that NASA watches YouTube?

Mr Berg: Not all the time.

J: Mr President I think perhaps now would be a good time for one of your tweets.

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 8

Ob: How did you know they were Haxians?

Ib: Well the Chameleon suit disguised them but not their footfalls, six vibrations then another set.

Ob: He said he is The Mercenary, like it meant something.

Ib: Unfortunately yes, they live very long lives Haxians that is. I only know one person whoever described a Haxian Mercenary prefixed with "The".  IGal used him quite a bit.

Ob: But I thought you said she had gone into hibernation because you had a falling out.

Ib: Barely besides she had more of a disagreement with the rest of her race than me although it was related to the IOP. She never believed me mostly because she had one of the artifacts.

Ob: What you never said!

Ib: Go roll your orbs somewhere else I had lost a friend.  She said that the artifact proved my theory was incorrect.

Ob: Your theory well let us call it what it really is a hypothesis not a theory. You have no evidence.

Ib: IOP is quite sound, what evidence do you have of the artifact theory exactly?

Ob: Well it is well known that the artifacts are meant to show meaning in the universe.

Ib: Really known by who exactly and in all this time only one has ever been found and its authenticity is definitely in question.

Ob:  When you said she had a disagreement with her race what did you mean exactly?

Ib: Trying to tempt me with a different tangent I see, well if you must know she is the matriarch of her species and they must do everything she commands.

Ob: Did they rebel then?

Ib: They thought she was diverting too many resources into finding the artifacts and even when she found one which is debatable they were still unhappy.  She entered hibernation early and her race had to go dormant until she awoke.  Of course they blamed me since I was only biped on the planet at the time.

Ob: I surprised you got off the planet alive.

Ib: Yes well her escape pod proved very useful indeed, heavily shield too.

Ob: Did not Grey World recover it from you upon landing?

Ib: Yes well Grey World seemed to blame me for IGal's hibernation too which is why they took the escape pod from me.  Said I caused a major diplomatic incident.

Ob: Well technically a full third of the x9-18 sector went dark because IGal's race went dormant.

Ib: Yes but it was not like the whole sector was dark, the rest picked up the work in no time.

Ob: I am not sure two hundred and thirty four cycles counts as "no time".

Ib: Fine! Have you looked at the artifact yet?

Ob: Well I would rather not look at it since it is very ugly.

Ib: But it is a really bad image of us, Greys that is.

Ob: I find it quite vulgar to look at let alone handle it.

Ib: I am sure the statue is merely a facade.  It is what is inside that interests me.

Ob: Err, your not going to stick to protocol then?

Ib: Do you really want to explain to the Colony Commission about your attempt to seed a new planet?

Ob: Perhaps you are right but what about the Haxian mercenaries?

Ib: You did get the ship shielded right?

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 7

Human Interlude #3

J: Mr President we think the incident in Turkey involved a NTI.

Mr President: What is that some form of trading instrument I have never heard of before or perhaps a currency from one of those really small countries like England.

J: Mr President please do not talk like that the walls have ears.

Mr President: I do not see any ears looks flat to me.

J: Well technically the walls in here are curved which is why everything is bent to hell.

Mr President: Language!

J: What hell?

Mr President: No 'bent' we do not want people knowing what I really...

J: But they already..err..Yes Mr President.  Mr Berg your science adviser can best explain it.

Mr Berg: NTI Mr President stands for Non-Terrestrial Intelligence.

Mr President's hair: is there any other kind. 

Mr Berg: What did you say I couldn't hear what you said. Mr President have you been putting that oil I gave you on your hair?

Mr President: I did not say anything. Lets nuke them get rid of two stones with one errr.

Mr Berg: Mr President I think nuking a member of NATO would be a bad idea.

Mr President: How about a tweet, it is amazing how much money you can make with a single tweet.

J: Mr President I think a tweet might be worse than nuking them, remember Bob sir.

Mr President: Bob that bobs around, that's pretty funny.

J: Yes Mr President very droll your wit astounds me at times. Can we get back to the matter at hand Mr President what do you want to do in Turkey.

Mr President: Let them handle it, I'm the President of the United...

J: States sir.

Mr President: Yes I know, have they delivered my new quilt yet with the stars on the inside?

Mr Berg: But Mr President I think we should address the problem in Turkey, this could be a prelude to war by the NTIs.

Mr President's  hair: Only if they are stupid. 

Mr President: I think we should play golf this afternoon if I'm not allowed to blow stuff up or send a tweet it has to be golf.

Mr Berg & J: Yes Mr President.

Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 6

some time ago...

WARNING! WARNING! Anomaly detected!

Initiate Hibernation De-sequence

Signal Located

Initiate Communications

some time now...

Ib: one down two to go.

T1: What did you say?

Ib: I was wondering about the history of the statue you are searching for?

T1: I don't care about history, its a paying job.

Ib: Your just a mercenary then?

T1: Not just a I am The Mercenary!

Ib: I do know a little bit about art myself and that statue looks like it was made by young humans.

T1: I thought you said you hadn't see it.

Ib: I have seen it in images that is why I am here to see it physically.

T1: Really, you came to see something that you say was made by kids. Where exactly are you from?

Ib: Lots of different places.

T1: Really! I think you have more a hands behind your back than you are saying.  I think we need to shake you up.

Ib: Wait! Do not something you may...

T1: Too late.

Ib: OB!!! Why exactly is my face squashed against the ceiling? I can barely move!

Ob: They must be using s-waves to create negative mass. Try resetting the suit it should cancel the waves out.

T1: Who are speaking to?  Who are you?

Ib: Turn both our signals down I cannot reach control.

Ob: One interval.

Ib: One of my other selves just found the RSK, locator is attached.

Ob: Received, well that is an ugly looking thing.

Ib: I can reset the suit now, errr Ob can you do it remotely.

Ob: One interval.

Human Interlude #2

J: Mr President there has been an incident in Turkey. 

Mr President: Agent J are they complaining about the tariffs already. 

J: Mr President my name is not Agent J that was just some film you watched please try to remember that. The incident incurred in the national museum involving a giant tentacled creature. 

Mr President: Perhaps one of the ex-CIA directors knows something? 

J: Mr President you have revoked all their clearances they can't help you. 

Mr President: Maybe Mr Fox on the box knows? 

J: Mr President that box doesn't know everything and it only tells you stuff you want to hear.