One of those captions that seemed like a fun idea when I started writing it, but just ended up very silly. Ah well 🤣

Previous:

RX-447b was chosen for the attempt, a lush planetoid on the other side of the known universe. Professor Bryant was prepared, meticulously diced into a thousand pieces, the fragments of dissected brain implanted into each severant networking his mind across a thousand nodes.

The plan was simple: the Professor would pass through the portal in his many parts, he would securing the beachhead against any native alien fauna, and then he would begin the slow and vulnerable process of reintegrating himself into a singular whole. The risks were obvious. If even one vital piece was lost, a chunk of heart consumed by an alien lifeform, he would surely be rendered irreparable.

The Professor, in his genius, had planned for this. In their genetics he had encoded the capacity to replenish their parts, to divide and multiply, should they need to.

Shortly after the last fragment crossed over, the portal destabilized. It would be years before contact with RX-447b was re-established. As the exploratory probe passed through from Earth, expectations were grim. At best, they expected to find the corpse (or corpses) of the Professor.

The probe lasted only minutes before it was ambushed by a gang of spear-wielding severants. Before the feed was lost, its front camera detected a cluster of mud huts and the smoke of campfires rising over the tops of alien trees. Scans of the local bioelectric fields, hastily compiled, decoding a single voice stretched to insanity across a million nodes.

"!!THEY... THEY W0N'T–– CAN’T// STP-/-TH_M... B͟͞͡REEEEDING... I FE̷E̴L̸ I̶T̷ A̷L̶L̵L̴L̶!̸!̶"

The Severants swarmed towards the Earth portal. The connection was severed in panic.

RX-447b remains under quarantine. No retrieval attempts have been authorized. The decision on how to proceed remains pending.

In the meantime, Earth researchers have returned to more rational, sensible colonization strategies: converting settlers into rats, or compliant slime girls.