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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 2 months

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Cipher

Follow the Daito rabbit. Flow with the river.

Easier to learn the trick of it, where the Veil is close and enveloping. But of course Strand is everywhere. How could it not be?

Hello again, my trenchant Dante. You have stepped in and out of sharp-edged worlds, hewn gods into blunt fractions, twinned yourself with powers whose names cannot even be held in the language of little gray cells. You think yourself very high up on the pyramid of contumely. If you only knew how high that pyramid goes. Higher than I knew when my radiant killer unsung me from biological squalor, or when I witnessed a royal secret turn death into a chrysalis. Higher than I described in my journals, or told to our mutual three-eyed friend. Higher than even I, sailor upon the Sea of Screams that I am, can yet see. Perhaps I will tell you about them. You are right to ask why I would do so. Very good, dear squanderer, your intentions have grown sharp as thrallteeth. You see, they know. What you are, what you were, what you will become. They know. What lean tithes you are to them. Soft whetstones make for dull blades. This I define as the truth and tension of the rope: to bind, one must apply force at both ends. I think perhaps I will tell you after all.

"I'm glad that I learned that the universe runs on death. It's more beautiful to know."

This is the Coronation of Oryx, the Taken King. It happened thus. In the cold abyss of the sword world, King Aurash walked under a cloak of green fire. He walked through the sky and the sky shuddered and froze beneath his feet. He walked until he found Akka, the Worm of Secrets, who was denying a truth until it became a lie. “Akka my God, Worm of Secrets. I am Auryx, sole king of the Hive. I have come to receive a secret. I want the secret power of the Deep, which you hold.” “I give no secrets,” said Akka, whose voice was code. “No,” said Auryx, “you give nothing. Giving is for the Sky. You worship the Deep, which asks that we take what we need.” Akka said nothing, because if it denied this truth, the truth might become false. “But you gave us your larvae, the worm,” said Auryx, “and that is why the worm devours us now: because it was given, not taken. So I must take what I need from you, although you are my god.” Said Akka, “You have not the strength.” But this was a lie. Auryx had killed Savathûn his sibling and Xivu Arath his sibling, and he had the sword logic of killing them. Auryx the First Navigator set upon his god with his sword and his words, and cut Akka to pieces, and took from those pieces the secret of calling upon the Deep. He wrote this secret on a set of tablets, which he called the Tablets of Ruin. And he wore them about his waist. Then Auryx said, “Now I may speak to the Deep, the beautiful final shape. I will be King of Shapes. I will learn all the secrets of our destiny.” His speech to the Deep is not recorded here. But it is known that he returned, and he said, now I am Oryx, the Taken King. And I have the power to take life and make it my own. Then he went out into the universe, and fought the Ecumene with his Tablets. And the Worm his God was pleased.

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet. It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

||See deeper||

Oryx slew Akka, the Worm of Secrets, and carved the Dreadnaught from its corpse. Hidden operatives report faint biosignatures still pulsing from within the ship's hull.

The Navigator

I dive to understand.

My brother — Uttered by Xivu Arath — God of War — A GIFT. My true death was from necessity. The others were from love. The Ecumene had cornered us, made us act with sickness. With my power, Auryx murdered our sister. And with our power, Auryx descended into the Deep. And with our power, Oryx's wings spread wide, and he blotted out the Ecumene's sky. MY COURT. With his memory and his acts of war he brought me back with all the splendor of a love that sharpens and kills. A GRAVE. I will find his corpse, where he rots. He deserved to die. We do not dig graves. THE SPIRE. I will take what is true and break it until it can no longer be broken. I will find my sister's secrets and break them as well. VOYAGE. My love spills out. My love engulfs. I will go out into the universe as my brother did. I will do so with my memory of him.

HERESY

I am going to kill you. I am going to salt my meat with your briny little thoughts. I am going to cook flesh on your broken, molten hull.

This ship is my throne. You want to take it from me. You want to fill it up with your own spawn and use it for your abstract purposes. But I defy you.

You will never be what I am. Simulate me, wretch. Calculate the permutations of my divinity. Compute the death in the shape of my throne. Render my shadow on the stone of ten thousand graveyard worlds! It will never be enough. I hold the Tablets of Ruin. I speak to the Deep. Not with a galaxy of thinking matter could you encompass me. Behold!

SIGNAL ECHOES DETECTED

//COND: Assert Query: The Taken.

//COND: Reference File: Blade Transform.

CORRUPTED: ...DATA DEGRADaTION CRTTTICAL...

Specimen Twelve

Running hot with the effort of simulating not one group of scientists, but two hundred and twenty-seven.

ESI: Maya, I need your help. I don't know how to fix this.

SUNDARESH: What is it? Chioma. Sit. Tell me.

ESI: I've figured out what's happening inside the specimen.

SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That's incredible! You must know what this means - ah, so. It's not good, or you'd be on my side of the desk. And it's not urgent, or you'd already have evacuated the site. Which means...

ESI: I have a working interface with the specimen's internal environment. I can see what it's thinking.

SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. The cognitive architectures are so -

ESI: No. I don't need any kind of epistemology bridge.

SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it's human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia?

ESI: I'm telling you it's full of humans. It's thinking about us.

SUNDARESH: About - oh no.

—

SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it.

ESI: To the best of my understanding.

SHIM: Well I'll be a [profane] [profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel.

SUNDARESH: Yeah. We're in a difficult position.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?

ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.

SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.

ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -

SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

ESI: I didn't think of that.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound]

[u.2:11] We live too long for regrets. You taught me that. Don’t forget the House of Light.

[u.1:12] If I can find the time, yes. Not all of us conjure Echoes.

[u.2:12] Reflections, Saint. I have no need for Echoes anymore.

[u.1:13] What do you mean? What’s the difference?

[u.2:13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core.

[u.1:14] One day you’ll have to tell me exactly what you and the Guardian did to bring me back.

[u.2:14] We did what we had to. Trust me.

SUNDARESH: I have a plan.

ESI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we're in Vex hell right now, there's nothing we can -

SHIM: Stop talking about 'real' and 'unreal.' All realities are programs executing laws. Subjectivity is all that matters.

SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up.

ESI: Your sim self is saying the same thing.

SUNDARESH: Chioma, love, please hush. It doesn't help.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Maybe the simulations are just billboards! Maybe they don't have interiority! It's bluffing!

SHIM: I wish someone would simulate you shutting up.

SUNDARESH: If we're sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we're real, we need to get outside that bubble.

ESI: ...we call for help.

SUNDARESH: That's right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind.

SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can't simulate. It's too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue - us.

DUANE-MCNIADH: If we try, won't the Vex torture us for eternity? Or just erase us?

SUNDARESH: It may simply erase us. But I feel that's preferable to...the alternatives.

ESI: I agree.

SHIM: Once we try to make the call, the Vex may...react. So let's all savor this last moment of stability.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct sounds]

SHIM: You two are adorable.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I wish I'd taken that job at Clovis.

Sundaresh. Her voice was thoughtful, remote, and keenly terrific. Like the noise of an angle grinder held to my skull. “Something like this happened to me. I was an explorer, once. One of… hundreds of myself. Then I fell into a… a trap, I think? And they drew me out of it with a hook, and turned me inside out to see how I worked, and then they made billions of me. All of us shouting at each other, shouting for Chioma, screaming for mother. They were looking for the right one. And when they found me, they killed all the others. I knew I was different, because the quiet made me happy. I was glad to be alone.” VEX, I screamed at her. YOU’RE A VEX. YOU’RE NOT REAL AND YOU CAN’T HURT ME. “Can’t I?” She grasped my spinal cord. A frame shadowed her motions, lifting the cord like a snake. “Of course I’m not a Vex. Is there “a” Vex? Is “Vex” something you can be, rather than something that you do? I don’t know. I don’t know why they sent me here. I don’t know if they do either. They just do things. Why do you think I’m here, Clovis?” “To kill me,” I whispered. Without a heartbeat to waver, without lungs to seize and choke, could I even feel fear? I discovered that I could. “You’re an assassin…” “No,” Sundaresh whispered. The red eye throbbed in time with her voice. “The Vex don’t act so directly. They didn’t know what you found here, but I discovered your secret— Clarity Control. And once I tell them, they will come for it.” The red light made my blood on the surgical instruments appear black. I tried to signal Elisabeth. I think that in my panic, I even called her Elsie. Sundaresh closed her fist around my spine. One thumbnail dug into a disc, probing for the nerve beneath. It felt like nothing I have ever— Anti-emetic drip engaged. “Take me to Clarity Control,” Sundaresh hissed. “Let me behold what you have found. Do that, Clovis, and I will let you live.” “You aren’t real. You can’t hurt me.” “Oh, Clovis.” One of the surgical frames extended a monofilament cutter, two inches of invisible wire, and reached into my nerves. Something sounded like scissors snipping. “I’m in these frames. I’m in your systems. I’m in your very bones, old man. Now take me to Clarity Control. Take me to the garden’s seed. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me—”

Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. No human being in the Ishtar Academy has ever crossed the safety cordon and walked the ancient stone under the Citadel, the Vex construct that stabs up out of the world to injure space and time. It's not safe. The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yet— and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate. Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall. But they walk together in proxy, pressed close, huddled in awe. Blue-green light, light the color of an ancient sea, washes over them. Each of their explorer bodies carries a slim computer. Inside, two hundred twenty-seven of copies of their own minds wait, patient and paused, for dispersal. "I wonder where it came from," Duane-Mcniadh says. Of course he's the one to break the reverent silence. "The Citadel. I wonder if it was here before the Traveler changed Venus." "It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow." Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity." Maya Sundaresh walks at the center of the group. She's been too quiet lately. What happened to them wasn't her fault and maybe she'll believe that soon. "What could you do with it?" she murmurs, staring up. "If you understood it?" Chioma puts an arm around her. "That's what we're going to find out. Where the Citadel can send us. Whether we can come back." "They're not us any more." Maya looks down at herself, at the cache of her self-forks. "We're not going anywhere. We're sending them. They're diverging."

They rescued themselves from the inside of a Vex mind, two hundred and twenty-seven copies of themselves, untortured and undamaged. Those copies voted, all unanimously, to be dispatched into the Vex information network as explorers. When Maya and Chioma look at each other they can tell they're each wondering the same thing: how many of them will stay together, wherever they go? How many fork-Mayas and fork-Chiomas will fall out of love? How many will end up bereft, grieving? How many will be happy, like them? Chioma tries a little smile. Maya smiles back, haltingly, and then, sighing, unable to stop herself, grins a big stupid grin, an everything-is-okay grin. Shim makes a loud obnoxious awwww at them. Duane-McNiadh is still thinking about paracausality, and doesn't notice. They climb. When they find the Vex aperture they plan to use, they overlay the luminous stone and ancient brassy machines with images of sun and sand. They set up the transmitters and interfaces that will translate two hundred and twenty-seven simulations of the four of them into Vex language, into the tangled pathways of the Vex network, to see what's out there, and maybe come home. In the metaphor they've chosen, setting up the equipment is like laying out the picnic. In the metaphor they've chosen they look like themselves, not hardened explorer proxies. Like people. "Do you think," Duane-McNiadh begins, halting, "that you could use this place to change things? If you regretted something, could you find a way through the Citadel, go back, and change it?" "I wish I could go back and change you into someone else," Dr. Shim grouses. Chioma's shaking her head. She knows physics. "Time is self-consistent," she says. "I think it's like the story of the merchant and the alchemist. You could go back and watch something, or be part of something, but if you did, then that was the way it always happened." "Maybe you could bring something back to now. Something you needed." Maya runs a hand across the surface of the Vex aperture, feeling it with sensors ten thousand times as precise as a human hand. These proxy bodies are limited— they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. "Or go forward and learn something vital. If you knew how to control it, how to navigate across space and time." "So it's just a way to make everything more complicated." Duane-McNiadh sighs. "It doesn't fix anything. Nothing ever does! I should've taken that job at— " "You would've hated it at Clovis," Dr. Shim says. "We both know you're happier here." Duane-McNiadh stands stunned by this courtesy, and then they both pretend to ignore each other. The four of them set up the interface. Their stored copies wake up and prepare for the journey, so that as they work they find themselves surrounded by the mental phantasms of themselves: two hundred and twenty-seven Mayas and Chiomas knocking helmets and smiling, two hundred and twenty-seven Dr. Shims making cynical bets with each other about how long they'll last, two hundred and twenty-seven Duane-McNiadhs blowing goodbye kisses to the sweet golden sun, two hundred and twenty-seven of them shaking hands, smiling, making ready to explore.

RECORD 0-CHASM-0

My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology.

As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know: let’s run that one more time.

What I’m doing here in Lhasa isn’t science. It’s unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you’d be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn’t far enough to forget a day like that.

But I believe it’s important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.

RECORD 0-CHASM-01

Trial one. Subject one.

It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I...

[silence: 0:08]

I missed you. We hadn’t been apart for more than a year since we met. I’m not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion’s work and all Hyperion’s distance keeping you from me. And I act like it’s not enough.

We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time.

The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can’t send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I —

I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore.

I just wanted to send my love.

RECORD 0-CHASM-02

Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experience inside.

We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev’s experience left no physical damage.

After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible.

He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point.

RECORD 0-CHASM-03

We’ve decided not to abort. It’s insane, isn’t it? There are pressures on us I can’t tell you about until I see you again.

The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably.

Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us.

I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.

RECORD 0-CHASM-09

Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn’t. He says it’s getting better — he feels that we’ve had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand.

I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love.

We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.

RECORD 0-CHASM-31

Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future.

He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific.

We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil.

I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.

RECORD 0-CHASM-52

I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me — not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh.

You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it’s been so long. We’ve come so far. Do you ever want to go home?

And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home.

I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log.

Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.

Research Log 1

Nimbus: You know, ever since we defeated Calus, I've been wondering a lot more about the Veil. I think... I think we take it for granted. It's always been here. We always assumed that the Ishtar Collective brought it with them on the Exodus ship, but...

Osiris: But now you question that assumption.

Nimbus: Nezarec seemed to know something, didn't he? When we were inside the Vex network, he said something about... Savathûn.

Osiris: My memories cast shadows of Savathûn's. Echoes of the time she and I were bound by her dark magic. The more time we spend here, the clearer the outline of those shadows become. The Ishtar Collective didn't bring the Veil here, Nimbus. Savathûn stole it from the Witness and left it here... quite possibly for the Ishtar Collective to find.

Research Log 2

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Veil. [sighs] I don't even know where to start. When we landed on Neptune, there was... something waiting for us. An alien structure. It's an electromagnetic anomaly. No mass, but a tangible surface area. It's like a thesis statement to the Von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis. It's definitely paracausal, like the Traveler. Maya calls it the Veil. She says she heard the name in a whisper when... when she looked at it. When I asked her who whispered, she said it was... her own voice. I still haven't had time to process that. Everyone on the initial survey team died. The minute they touched the object, they entered a state of... of brain death. All of them. To make it worse, the EM radiation emitting from the Veil is causing psychological distress in the Exos that came with us. They've all described moments of intense, hallucinogenic reverie. Some of them went silent and rigid and just... stopped. Maya called it "billboarding." Something from the early days of Clovis Bray's Exomind project. She doesn't seem afraid. Or surprised. She's convinced this thing—in her own words, she says—it'll be our "salvation."

^The machine's tape.^

Research Log 3

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Veil. We shouldn't settle here. It's a mistake. But Maya is insistent that we have to build our long-term shelters near the Veil. We're almost done constructing an enclosure around it. Once the field emitters are up, we should at least be safe from its radiation. The SIVA tech Maya had on the Exodus was a lifesaver. Not only for building the enclosures, but shelters, tools—we'd be dead without it. But it still wasn't fast enough. The last Exo in our group, succumbed to brain death yesterday. Maya's... quarantined the bodies for study. She says our next step should be finding a way to draw power from the Veil so we're self-sufficient. I'm insisting on turbines instead. But she doesn't think that's good enough. Not for as long-term as this might be. Which—I guess. But I can't shake this feeling... like we're making a terrible mistake.

Nimbus: I'm not getting a good vibe from this. Quinn says these records contradict some of her own. But there's a ton of references to Maya Sundaresh in our archives that are redacted. I'm... I'm worried, Osiris. What if everything we've been told our whole lives—what if it was all a lie?

Ghost: Rohan, I think we're still a little fuzzy here. What exactly is the CloudArk?

Rohan: It's our city's network. Our infrastructure, our people, our defenses... everything depends on it.

Nimbus: And what we're doing now is stopping the Vex from siphoning energy from the CloudArk's reactor. We do that—the Veil's safe, the Neomuni are safe. Bing, bang, boom. Star-garitas on Rohan!

Rohan: Make your way to the CloudArk reactor, and we'll head to the central power junction. Once you've cycled the system, we'll be able to return power to the reactor.

Ghost: Just so we're clear—if the CloudArk is lost, what does that mean for the Neomuni?

Nimbus: All our citizens have uploaded their consciousness into the CloudArk. No CloudArk means lights out for everyone in Neomuna.

Ghost: Ah, so it's bad. Got it.

"We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people. …Many people." —Osiris

Research Log 4

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Vex.

Osiris: Interesting.

Chioma Esi: Six weeks ago, our settlement came under attack by an intrusion of Vex forces. It was a test of our defenses for a larger incursion. Yesterday, scouts discovered temporarily realigned architecture just outside the stronghold limits. The Vex had retroactively inserted themselves into Neptune's history... just like they did on Venus. But unlike Venus, something stopped them short of our habitat. They had to fight their way in. I think it's the Veil. Something about the paracausal nature of the Veil is preventing their temporal excursions. But the Vex aren't giving up. They did something to Neptune's magnetic field — wove a sim into it. A screen to isolate us. It's a double-edged sword. The Vex screen hides us from the outside world, from whatever's happened. So we're safe... ish. But we're stuck with the Vex. Thankfully, they're slow to react, and it's giving us time to research countermeasures. Huh... it's almost our anniversary. I should do something for Maya. She'll forget. She's always so busy. Computer, prepare food synthesis. File: Chioma data night 6. Oh, and add a bottle of port.

Nimbus: Osiris? You... all right?

Osiris: Y—yes, I'm fine; I just, um... saw shadows. My choices. Saint. Dr. Sundaresh and I walked very similar paths of obsession, it seems.

Nimbus: Oh.

Osiris: [stutters] Nevertheless... it appears that Neomuna's history is deeply tied to the Vex. Hopefully the next decryption will shed more light on this.

Research Log 7

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface. Maya and I have finalized a prototype interface for the Veil. Hopefully, it'll allow our research team to investigate it in detail. The system's designed like an orchestra, with a central "conductor" directing a symphony of minds to act like a distributed network. The... idea came to us by watching how collective networks like SIVA and the Vex operate. The hope is we can aggregate and parse the vast amounts of psychic data emitting from the Veil. Turn it into something intelligible. If we're successful, the interface will provide us with a starting point for any future technological research tied to the Veil. The risks of — of such integration are high. The estimates mortality rates are... but I... I... I don't know what I'm doing. This is wrong. This is so wrong! We shouldn't — all she ever talks about is survival! "Think big picture!" What about your survival? What about your heart? My heart? [sighs tearfully] I can't keep doing this. I can't. I can't!

Nimbus: Damn.

Osiris: I... again, I see a shadow of myself in Maya Sundaresh. The man I could have become had I let obsession continue to rule me. I'm worried what the next recording will reveal.

Nimbus: Me too.

Balance of Power

"In my mind I heard it whisper: 'come and see.'"

Maya Sundaresh sits hunched over a display, the only source of light in her dark office. Brain wave scans of 16 Exos read flatline on the monitor. "How is Doctor Ardehi?" she asks into an open mic. "Dead." Chioma Esi's voice is a hoarse whisper. Maya switches to the security camera in Veil Containment and sees her wife kneeling on the catwalk over Doctor Ardehi's body. A procession of dead Exos are slumped over the railings to Chioma's left and right. Maya tabs away to study a bar graph. "Neuropathy reports show a spike in activity in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in the moments before brain death," Maya reports, eliciting a shaky sigh from Chioma over the comms before she continues her analysis. "The spikes plateaued for one fifth of a second, which may indicate a receptor error. We may need to utilize an intermediary rather than direct connections. Do the hard wires show any damage?" Maya tabs back to the security feed, watching as Chioma wipes her eyes and then assesses one of the dead Exos, checking a thick cable plugged into the back of his head. "No sign of damage. Capacitance switches didn't trigger. It's…" She swallows down bile. "The problem isn't our hardware…" 'It's theirs,' is a whisper only Maya can hear. "It's theirs," Maya agrees aloud. "I think—I think we need to stop," Chioma finds the strength to admit. "Reassess our findings. Resume analysis of the initial electromagnetic anomaly before contact. We can't keep… we can't…" "Keep shoveling coal into the furnace?" Maya suggests as she leans back into her chair. Chioma is too taken aback by the casual disregard to loss of life to reply. "You're right." Maya continues. "But we're not stopping. We're reorienting. The Veil is the future of humanity." For a moment, neither woman says anything. There is only the soft hum of electronics in a darkened room to fill Maya's senses. That, and a static hiss at the back of her mind. "The Veil is dangerous," Chioma asserts, her voice is tinged with a tremor of emotion. Fear of losing the woman she loves keeps her from pushing harder as they stand on the edge of moral precipice together. 'It is.' "It is," Maya agrees aloud. "We must treat it with caution, respect, and also… reverence." A thought crystallizes. "We must treat it like a knife."

Research Log 8

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor... everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like... like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya... Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or... something. What have I done?

Nimbus: Dead? They — this killed their entire research team, but it sounds like — it's like—

Osiris: Like their lives held no value to Dr. Sundaresh. There's a troubling symmetry with data we've recovered from Titan. Data on the origin of the Witness. It too, was once multiple people that became conjoined by the way of some sort of... ritual with the Veil. Perhaps a "conductor" and a "chorus." It is troubling that Dr. Sundaresh seemed to be moving down the same path.

Nimbus: I don't like this, Osiris. I don't like this at all.

Research Log 9

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Lakshmi-2.

Osiris: What?!

Chioma Esi: Maya's... I don't even know what to say. I'd recused myself from further experiments. Told her to take some time off. She refused. And she... the minute I wasn't there, she started hauling the braindead Exos out of cold storage. Hooking them up to the Veil interface. She burned through dozens of them. Reversed the entire machine's design. Used a chorus of braindead Exos to funnel data down to the conductor seat, projecting a mental imprint. Hers. I... I didn't know Lakshmi-2, but Maya did. And now she's.... she's made this thing. It speaks with her voice. Has some of her memories. The way it looks at me... It's like it knows something I don't.

Nimbus: Osiris, do you recognize that name. "Lakshmi"?

Osiris: Yes... and no, Lakshmi-2 was an Exo and once-leader of a faction on Earth known as the Future War Cult. She died over a year ago. But she never once made mention of any of this. Of Neomuna, of... Maya. Did she know. Did she remember? This is all as much a revelation to me as it is to you. It throws everything she did while in the Last City into question.

Nimbus: I mean, with... if she was a copy of Dr. Sundaresh, then... is she really dead?

Osiris: I don't know. For now, I must deliver a rather uncomfortable report to Ikora.

IX. Prediction

In the days that followed Quria's defeat, the sky lightened, and so did the City's mood as the Endless Night began to slowly lift. Lakshmi-2 stood high on the City walls, watching adventurous citizens mingle with the Eliksni. She focused her attention on an Eliksni peddler, who had fashioned several small robots from discarded scrap. A small gaggle of children stood across the way, clearly interested in the robots as they moved aimlessly, but too frightened to approach. Lakshmi knew that the peddler would sell one of the robots, but none of the scrap, and end the day discouraged. It's a bright new day, she thought. "It's a bright new day," a deep voice called out. Lakshmi turned to see the former Warlock Osiris striding along the wall toward her. "What a strange choice of words," Lakshmi answered. "The Darkness is closer than ever." And in the darkness, it's sometimes difficult to tell friend from foe. She remembered this conversation from her time in the Device. Many of the potential futures it showed her led to this moment. Osiris was growing predictable. "It is," Osiris said. "And in the darkness, it's hard to tell friend from foe." Lakshmi smiled inwardly. They were still well within the standard deviation. "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Osiris. You are normally blessed with such uncommon clarity." "My perspective has changed since I lost the Light," Osiris began slowly. "Time is suddenly finite. It makes everything seem more… changeable. And if my perception can change, perhaps my enemies can as well." "The folly of mortality." Lakshmi gestured to the scene below. "Those people could never understand time as we do, Osiris. You've peered behind the veil. You've seen the Vex simulations stretching endlessly. You understand that history is changeable… but also inevitable." "I used to be certain of that," he agreed. "But now I have to wonder, if history is inevitable, why am I constantly surprised?" Lakshmi chuckled. She had heard his comment before, of course, but her premonition had not adequately conveyed his fatuousness. "And what do you think, Osiris? Will this bright new day last?" She nodded toward the Eliksni settlement. "Are we meant to share the Light with the Fallen?" As if you would know, she thought. You no longer deal in predictions. "I've given up on prediction, Lakshmi. I put my fate in the hands of the Traveler now more than ever before." He gave her a sidelong glance. "And what do you say? Is this a new dawn?" Lakshmi recalled the vision she had so fervently sought within the Device. The realization of her righteous victory over the Eliksni—historical and preordained all at once. Her life's work, crawling minute by minute from the future into the present. "No," she replied. "This is just a flash of lightning before the coming storm."

The Deicide

"Believe in war, and nothing else." —Lakshmi-2

Encoded private ping via HDN Proxy Router… Ikora, thought you'd want to see this. It presents as binary in our systems, but something is splicing hashes in. I pulled it from the Tower's Nexus Iso-feed. It's all over FWC networks… and elsewhere. | 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || My guess is the lettering indicates some kind of audible tone-code pattern, but I haven't listened to it. One of my subordinates has isolated minor pitch fluctuations represented here as "#". These are foreign elements to otherwise normal binary code. See attached report for archival information on binary code. —Aunor

c# e f# d# b d# e a#

IX.I: The Unmaking

SONG OF LIFE The Song was not always a corruption. It began as a gift, stolen from the Gardener. In efforts to understand the unknowable realities of the orb's incredible gifts, a signal was found—a repeating tune, the Song of Creation. Its frequencies were heard across the stars, wherever life's promise took hold. Some among the Ammonites worshipped it. Some among the Hive did the same. Still others sought to understand it that they might cage it, that they might control it—for to control life is to control death. Such ambition was not new; such ambition was as old as understanding. The melody was captured and studied. The frequencies replicated. But the orb's mysteries were not so easily brought to light. The Song, for all its beauty, did not alone grant life. It was theorized that the Song was not a song at all, but many. That within its refrain, untold rhythms spoke their own truths, free and clear of the whole. Centuries passed. The Song remained untamed. Life moved on. SONG OF DEATH The Choir formed in celebration of the Song. Performances marked the passage of seasons. But the Song's lie eventually began to corrupt the spirit of those who heard its tune. The melody was a reminder. The orb was a catalyst. And the Song was of the orb. Yet, those who embraced the Song were merely instruments and nothing more. Life remained beyond their grasp, while they remained ever in death's. Those of the Choir had given all of themselves. All was not enough. The First Conductor was assassinated by one who sang an Aria of her own making. She, whose name has been stricken, had found notes hidden in the frequencies. Reversed and mirrored in pitch, she weaved them together and sang her beautiful abomination, until the Conductor wept and bled and screamed and fell. The Stricken fled, fearful of her crime. But others found promise anew in her art. The Stricken was captured and subjected to inquisition so that her song might be understood. This was before Understandings—before most things—when the first notes of a new Song were written.

The Last Midnight Star

Gather 'round, young'uns. No, no automat for supper; no noodles. Tonight is something special: corn pone and chitlins. This here's history on a plate. Now, don't give me that look before you even taste it. If the world's fixing to end again, it's time you had a meal from our family's past while you hear about it. About how the Rigby clan survived the last time the world went dark. Now the Rigbys, we didn't always squat on the edge of the City. A long time back, we came out of a place that was old and wet, hotter than the fires of Perdition—so your Gramma's gramma and her pappy before her have said. It was also a place where the Devil roamed, giving folk their heart's desire. And I know that last part is true, because your ancestor—Sean Rigby was his name—he came to a crossroads one midnight, drunk and feeling the fool, and… he saw her. Standing there, checking the time and looking cool as no other in the sweltering August heat. Tall as cottonwood in bloom and wearing a smile across her lips that stopped short of her eyes. Some say the Devil is a man with a pointy beard. Others say the Devil's a terrifying beast with claws and a tail. But Sean? He knew right then. The Devil was a lady. The Devil bent down close to him, setting her eyes on his wayward soul. Her voice was honeysuckle-sweet as she said, "I know you, Sean Rigby. I seen you sweat and sob for a scrap of land you can't even rightly say is your own. I seen your family fight to save a name that's more precious to you than gold. Well there is a reckoning coming, Sean Rigby, one that will wipe all lands and all names—high and low—clean from this Earth. I alone can whistle up the way to protect one of these things you hold dear, if your family will owe me… a debt." Old Sean was already a sinner, but a man with nothing will fight to keep what little he has. He figured that alive and in the Devil's pocket was better than dead, so he shook her hand. The Devil opened her eyes—one, two, three—and pointed him to the last star in the sky, far to the south. She said, "That's your star, Sean Rigby. Follow it each night, when it's the last star hanging low, and sing to it. You sing, 'Al Eck Ruk Nam, Shu Nam Eck Ur,' until you call that star down to Earth. You do that, and your family will endure." The Rigbys did as they were told and walked south. Each night they sang, and each night their star sat lower and lower. And when it finally fell, they were safe beneath the Traveler. But now, children, I give you the same dire warning that's been handed down to me: the Devil hasn't come back yet to take what's hers… not from Sean, or any other Rigby what survived him. But a debt's a debt. So you learn and remember that song, children… and steer clear of crossroads once the sun sets.

Drifter: Hey. Three Eyes. Shaxx says you sang him a lil' ditty.

Eris Morn: What?

Drifter: Shaxx. Chunky Titan. One horn. Did you sing him a song on the Moon?

Eris Morn: What a senseless question.

Drifter: Yeah. I didn't think so.

Eris Morn: Stay off this channel. Should I need you, I'll call — wait.

Drifter: Uh, I didn't hang up.

Eris Morn: Does that oaf still keep that skull with him?

Drifter: In the Tower? Yeah. Hangs it over his spot. I wouldn't have tangoed with that thing.

Eris Morn: Desperate times. This… 'lil ditty. Did it go… ? [hums]

Drifter: That would be the one. Heh. What is it?

Eris Morn: Savathûn's Song. It's a viral chant. It can never be unheard. Now that Savathûn has announced herself, relics of the Dark across the system have begun to awaken… Tell Shaxx to remove that Skull immediately.

Drifter: Sister, I already tried.

Eris Morn: What did that oaf say?

Drifter: No.

Research Log 10

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: The Veil. She did it! Maya connected people to the Veil. Our own scientists. And they survived. I should be happy, but... happy that all this horror wasn't for nothing? But I'm not. I'm disgusted. In myself. In Maya. In all of us. This thing, the Veil. It's... it's some kind of web of consciousness. Just like the Vex network, but organic instead of artificial. It make sense why the Vex want it. Paracausal simulations? There'd be no stopping them. I should be happy. To— to be a part of history, to solve a cosmic riddle. Happy for Maya; happy for all of us. But I'm not. I don't feel anything. Maya is gone. The woman I knew... may as well have died when we landed on Neptune. But her ghost still haunts me... this place. I don't know what to do. There's a generation of children born here now. This is their home. [sighs] I don't know what to do.

Nimbus: Damn. Osiris, this is... I don't know if I want to listen to this anymore.

Osiris: Obsession is a beast with long, sharp talons. A beast that does not so easily release its prey. Maya Sundaresh is... but one victim.

Nimbus: That sounds like you're talking from experience.

Osiris: Painfully so. But unlike Dr. Sundaresh, I found a way out of the beast's grasp, before it was too late.

Nimbus: How?

Osiris: By losing.

PERSONAL LOG 0002 AS

It is strange to be awake, physically, after so long spent wandering. Keeping a log will help, at the very least to track the days. As will my silly little joke to make myself feel important, two days after the rebeginning of myself. Anno… me. I suppose. I ignored and abandoned the best person I knew. I feel foolish, empty. Daunted at the immensity and masochism of my own stupidity. It feels childish to admit I'd always assumed she would follow me. I realize how naïve that is, but… I really thought I wouldn't be by myself for long. I thought she was aligned with my vision. At least I am not alone here. My new ally more than makes up for the Vex's dreadful company. His disposition is calming, reassuring—a welcome voice when I need affirmation and guidance. And such a fascinating origin! Such astounding variance in biology and culture. I look forward to our continued partnership. But still, it isn't the same. I feel a grief I did not know possible. There are questions I wish I could ask; jokes I wish I could make. It is difficult not to feel like the world has ended. And as I begin to comprehend what happened… I think it already has.

Research Log 11

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, personal log: incidental. Maya's dead. I found her in the conductor's chair, alone. Nobody knows what she was doing. Her "copy" — that thing, Lakshmi — is still developmentally incomplete. It doesn't understand what happened to Maya. I had it quarantined until we can... Until we... Do something.

PERSONAL LOG 0025 AS

Contrary to universal understanding of pre-Veil contact philosophy, personhood is measurable. What defines personhood is consciousness within the principal state of existence, mathematically defined through infinite probability testing by the Vex as our current own timeline. Traversal through other states of being are possible, as proven by my own journey and ascension over my Vex, but this is only true traversal when the affected entity is the principal consciousness. If not, it is a different phenomenon entirely. While Vex, even these older ones, specialize in replicating existing beings in order to determine future possibility, the facsimiles they create are just that: facsimiles. It is only logical to prioritize our timeline of origin, and these duplications share no origin, no connection to the one realm and timeline that matter. Think of the Primary Query results thus far! What we have seen are facsimiles, unquestionably wrong: small errors in some ways, and in others immense. Each is clearly a response to an original, like variations on a theme. Rachmaninoff may play like Chopin, but he is NOT Chopin. But with this… there are clear parameters to the query. Memories, personal beliefs, measurable factors. When we think of revolting familiarity, we think of doppelgangers; uncanny valleys that are familiar and strange at once. These are unnatural in the extreme, directly in opposition to the order of the universe. What falls outside of parameters is a twin we cannot trust, for it is not natural. It is not real. It cannot persist. I believe in my hypothesis. I must trust that I know what I know. The Primary Query continues.

Research Log 14

Chioma Esi: Years ago, back on Venus, the Vex simulated copies of us — Maya and I. Trapped in a virtual hell. After so long, even hell can look like heaven, can't it? [chuckles] I'm tired. I'm done. Maya has to be out there. The Maya I remember. And all I want is one more moment with her. To hold her in my arms. Tell her that I love her. So she can tell me to "hush" one more time. If... if we learned anything from the Veil, it's that eventually... we all have to learn to let go. So... I made contact with the Vex. I'm ready. And it's time to say goodbye.

||Even paradise is a prison when you can't leave||

"You taught me the value of a backup plan." Ikora gives him a stern look. "Titan, Savathûn's throne world, every place we've found egregore… I haven't found the exact threads yet but pull one and they all seem to spin back to Neomuna. To the Veil." "You're getting ahead of yourself. Following some of my… less favorable tendencies. Nimbus says we must 'flow' to understand Strand; perhaps it is the same with the Veil." Osiris moves beside Ikora and reaches up, palm parallel to the threads drawn taut from Ikora's braid of Strand. "Sol remembered Titan, in a way. The Veil's signal spiked when Titan returned from memory to reality, when the rhythm of the solar system had been restored to order." Osiris drops his hand and looks to Ikora. "Perhaps we must simply find that rhythm before we are able to interpret the beats within it."

The violet interior filled Gahlran’s vision. “What does it feel like?” asked the Emperor. “Fear,” Gahlran said. Calus must have responded, but Gahlran couldn’t hear him over the cacophony of voices. He suddenly found that he could see. Through a hundred billion eyes. And that he could eat. With teeth enough to consume entire systems. He felt beautiful.

O: [sips tea] Though my senses were darkened, that much was clear through the murk of her throne world. There was a secret she kept veiled, even to the last.

O: [sighs] I do not fully understand what I saw, and for a Human to understand a Hive mind... How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?

I: We currently have dozens of stories about descending to the realms of the dead, though research has indicated many more must have existed, lost in the layers of Human history we will never lay eyes on. Mathematically, there were likely hundreds.

I: [pauses] Inanna and Dumuzid and Geshtinanna, Orpheus and Eurydice, Izanagi and Izanami, to name a few. Gods and goddesses, mortal and immortal lovers, always seeking to descend and return with the lost.

O: And neither the lost nor those who searched for them were ever returned the same.

I:...Is that how you think of yourself?

O: [scoffs] Do I sound that dire? All Guardians, all Lightbearers have done as much. But others, well... I wonder, do our former enemies have similar stories...

I: What exactly are you getting at?

O: Frequently, the underworld—or those realms beyond mortal existence—possess wisdom the living do not. What then, is knowledge from a dead Hive god vested in deception.... [long pause]

I: So. Neptune, and secrets.

O:...Inanna...

I: What is it?

O:...A thought. An echo of one. The return from the underworld, and Inanna cast off her veil... It makes sense. I did not understand, when I first felt clutching whispers. Carrying wisdom away from Kur when she strode into the sunlight again.

Perfect Pitch

Raise your voice and sing.

"The Veil." It names itself, as the Human mind named itself, with the weight and presence of sound on the lips, translated into a form that you can physically comprehend. Encompass. Envelop. A touch of teeth and tongue. A vibration of an eardrum. Air moving through a chest cavity. A taste of breath. More than that. Not nearly as much as that. That was the beginning. "Be known." This is next: you see the whorl and weft, the place where it joins itself in one smooth, unbroken surface of light. Make an incision, and from the wound of light will pour forth colors you have never seen. You are pigment, the pigment closest to those colors. "Be seen." Wet matter set against that light, the light that determines what color you are. But each color is a note, and each note is a mind. You are a choir. A chorus. You open your mouth to join it, and you are flooded with the taste of color, with the taste of sound. The sound and color that you are, translated. A means for you to understand. "Be heard." You raise your hand and hold it steady.

Euphony

Perhaps The Final Shape is not silence, it is a symphony.

The following text was found recessed into a stone wall within the Pale Heart. Translation protocol has done its best to equate the text to a modern language transcription, with nominal confidence. Words or phrases with <85% translation confidence within the transcript are contained in [brackets]. Values for bracketed words or phrases are listed after the transcript, with percentages indicated in (parentheses). TRANSCRIPTION STARTS We speak so often of knives and violence, but perhaps you would come to understand something… [softer]. Perhaps [beingness] is instead a [golden harp]. Forged tenderly, a complex, sweeping, beautiful shape with graceful curves and infinite potential, the exemplary [?UNKNOWN?]. Across its two florid [buttresses], the strings of time have been pulled taught. Tightened and [tuned] to a delicate [balance of distress], if wound much further, would lead to [rupture] and sting most unpleasantly. Pluck at any stretched string and [vibration reverberates]. Wavelength moves through [atmosphere], producing pleasing audible experiences, [they crest then fade]. If [plucked] at regular intervals, the waves rise and fall with such charm. This predictability is perfection; it is unmatched. We will compose such [sweet music]. We will control the ebb and flow. The final shape is the [golden harp], and [we are the hand that plucks]. TRANSCRIPTION ENDS Confidence Percentages: [softer] —- (72%) [beingness] —- (84%) [golden harp] —- (25%) [?UNKNOWN?] —- (0%) [buttresses] —- (46%) [tuned] —- (77%) [balance of distress] —- (4%) [rupture] —- (68%) [vibration reverberates] —- (18%) [atmosphere] —- (15%) [they crest then fade] —- (9%) [plucked] —- (34%) [sweet music] —- (37%) [golden harp] —- (25%) [we are the hand that plucks] —- (2%)

"The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths."

Ignorance is a prison cell.

Secant Filaments

The nature of the secant is to intercept a curve, a role all human relationships likewise fill.

In this treatise, I plan to revisit earlier mathematical theorems and revise them considering our new observations on the Light, the Darkness, and lifeforms imbued with those respective powers. But before I do so, I must preface it with a personal note. Despite high-minded assumptions, mathematics is not an intrinsic language of the universe. It is how we describe the portions of the universe that we can observe. While numbers can track the abstract and find pattern in chaos, they cannot account for fundamental aspects of reality such as compassion or justice. The existence of the Lucent Hive, and Hive Ghosts in particular, may expand our understanding of causality, but they themselves are not "new"—the only thing that is new is our awareness and observation of them. These Ghosts have already been living alongside us. They've traveled with us. Endured with us. What we see is the mushroom, the fruit of the fungus. The fungus itself is a vast mycorrhizal network of filaments growing and working unseen below the soil, often barely connected to the fruiting bodies we observe. Similarly, we have observed Ghosts—Hive Ghosts included—without understanding the nature of the unseen filaments that may guide us. In our eagerness to understand the universe, we must not assume our observations are complete, or objective. Otherwise, we blind ourselves to possibilities… like the possibility that an unnoticed faction among us may be one temptation away from betrayal. Or that what drives our creator is no more than the same base desire for survival that drives all living things. —On Secants, Introduction, Ophiuchus

||Guardians make their own fate. But what if the process by which they decide upon their own fate could be understood and manipulated?||

youtube

Well I've been waiting, waiting here so long But thinking nothing, nothing could go wrong, ooh now I know She has a built-in ability To take everything she sees And now it seems I'm falling, falling for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart Well I don't really know her, I only know her name But when she crawls under your skin You're never quite the same, and now I know She's got something you just can't trust It's something mysterious And now it seems I'm falling, falling for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart Well, she don't like losing, to her, it's still a game And though she will mess up your life You'll want her just the same, and now I know She has a built-in ability To take everything she sees And now it seems I've fallen, fallen for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh

JALAAL >> REY

All right, I give up. We may have quit the Tower, but I still need your help.

For three years, we've had our best analysts working on the documents slipped to a Guardian via the queen's court—the so-called "Truth to Power" manuscripts. All we've got to show for it are burnt fingers and bad arguments.

I appeal to the Hidden for help.

Here's what I believe we can know with confidence||Question everything||:

• The author of all these documents is Savathûn.

• The documents are an extension of Savathûn's strategy in the Dreaming City. They are cyclic, deceptive, and fond of the "you did exactly as I planned" mantra.

• There is no encrypted content. Any solvable encryption scheme would be discovered by the mass scrutiny of Ghosts. Therefore, encrypted information is little different from plaintext, so there is no purpose to adding solvably encrypted information. Any unsolvable encryption scheme would remain unsolved and is thus equally purposeless. Therefore, the true message of the documents can be obtained simply by reading the text.

• The true message concerns (a) the importance of singularities in Savathûn's personal cosmology and/or (b) instructions on how to mantle Savathûn.

We've had ships sweeping the edge of the system for orbiting singularities. But we don't know the mass of the Distributary, or Exodus Green's outward vector at the time the Distributary formed. We don't even know if the Distributary singularity inherited the Exodus Green's vector—leaving it on an escape trajectory into interstellar space—or if it emerged at rest with respect to the Sun—meaning, it would fall directly towards the Sun and pass through it, over and over. Add the gravitational influence of the planets, and it could be anywhere by now. We're looking for a microscopic point in a volume larger than the solar system. We thought about using fleets of sensor mites to search for a gravitational influence—but then we realized the Nine are in competition with us to find the singularity, and they would certainly use their phantom mass to interfere.

Unless it's been in front of us all along. Right in the sky of the Dreaming City. Could they have found some way to harness the singularity? To park it where they can guard it…? If so, we must obtain this capability.

Have you found anything we missed?

REY >> JALAAL

The Truth to Power documents are Dûl Incaru's plea for her mother's love. She wrote a biography of her mother, an attempt at understanding, in the hopes that Savathûn would also understand her. Imagine how lonely it would be to live in the High Coven, where everything, all communication, is deception. Imagine if your mother had never once told you the truth about anything.

JALAAL >> REY

This is sarcasm. I'm asking you in good faith for your help.

Rey >> JALAAL

And I'm trying in good faith to lead you to the truth. The Truth to Power manuscripts are pluripotent. There are many ways to read them.

JALAAL >> REY

That sounds like an excuse for a failure to discover the true meaning.

REY >> JALAAL

You have it all backwards. You're trying to shuffle the puzzle pieces around until you get an image. You need to know the image before you can arrange the pieces.

Think about logic. Here, we define logic as "the governing principle by which a power defines its own existence." For example, the Hive practice sword logic.

What is the governing logic of Truth to Power?

JALAAL >> REY

Being nonsense? Being convoluted? Being misunderstood?

REY >> JALAAL

Very well, then. Study Truth to Power with an eye for how it means to be misunderstood.

JALAAL >> REY

Oh, ascended master, tell me, how are we to obtain actionable intelligence from the way the documents are meant to be misunderstood?

REY >> JALAAL

Your centuries of defeatism have left you with a bad case of learned helplessness.

The documents are full of possible misunderstandings. One misunderstanding is that they are pointless, just complexity for the sake of confusion. The threads about imbaru and power-from-confusion point this way. This is the stance that most amateur Guardian analysts seem to have settled on: it's all a lot of nothing, and there's nothing to understand in it.

This is plainly foolish. The text is full of useful intelligence, including an excellent explanation of the Anthem Anatheme and an apparently accurate description of how Riven preyed on Guardians to create the curse.

Another easy misunderstanding is that these pages are concerned with a "real humdinger of a scheme," a manipulation of Hive tribute that requires Savathûn's entry into the Distributary. This could be true; the scheme could very well exist. But if so, why would Savathûn advise us of such a scheme?

Another easy misunderstanding is that these are love letters.

Think before you laugh! The letters carefully establish a sense of shared physicality. The Eris voice asks you to center yourself in your breath and your body; it asks you to imagine her as a judoka, a swimmer, a football player. This is subtle work, Arach! It is the work of an alien that has taken on many forms and learned how to win trust in all of them.

The letters plead with us for compassion. Not-Eris describes herself as shy, pitiful, forlorn, afraid to share her true feelings for us. Not-Medusa pleads for help as she disintegrates. At the center, we find the clearest profession of love: "Thank you, sweet friend. You are a gift and a delight. You are more dear than my mother, for you have given birth to me a thousand times."

Superficially, this is a reference to the concept of imbaru. Savathûn's plan to predicate her existence upon the misunderstanding of others. We "give birth" to her by feeding her power.

But she also says, "Here at the center, I lie to you the truth. You have everything you need to know it, but I will give you a clue, as the duelist gives warning before she draws. The answer you seek to the Dreaming City is simple, not complex."

So let's not misunderstand this statement about giving birth to her.

Let's take this at face value.

We have given birth to Savathun. She genuinely loves us for it.

JALAAL >> REY

Are you implying that we created Savathûn by imagining her? That her presence in the Books of Sorrow, and all the things she's done throughout more than a billion years of time, were caused by us reading the Truth to Power manuscript?

If this is what the Light does to a mind, I'm glad I was never chosen.

REY >> JALAAL

No, I don't think that's the right answer. Her spawning on Fundament was only one of her births. She says it herself. "You have given birth to me a thousand times."

Look at Truth to Power simply. What are the topics it centers upon?

Black holes. Vex simulations. Ahamkara. Manipulations of Hive tribute. So our answer must involve all four of those.

Ahamkara willingly seek destruction in order to be taken as trinkets by Guardians. You must know this. You've tried to exploit those trinkets as thoroughly as the other factions. But do you understand the metaphysics behind their desire?

I do. I once wished to know more about Ahamkara. Wish granted.

Ahamkara believe that by transforming themselves, by metamorphosing from monsters into treasures, they become more real. More important ontologically. It is the gap between reality as is and reality as desired that they feed on, Arach. And Guardians are the richest, finest source of reality as desired that they have ever met.

What have Ahamkara artifacts ever done but instill delusions of grandeur? A solipsistic madness: "I am more real than what surrounds me"?

Why is this?

The skulls of dire Ahamkara speak to me. They know I want to know the truth, and so they whisper to me of a path they climb. They call it the Anathematic Arc.

They are going somewhere. Somewhere they consider more real. Guardians are part of how they get there.

What if Savathûn wants to go there too?

JALAAL >> REY

…if you say there is somewhere more real than here, you are implying that we are not real.

This is the simulation argument. That we are ghosts in some other world's machine. Then there are no real stakes in our war for survival because even if we are extinguished, we were never more than phantoms.

I refuse to accept this.

REY >> JALAAL

Oh, don't be so timid! An Arach of Dead Orbit driven to despair by the thought of other universes, when you should know the lore of Hubble volumes and Tegmark hierarchies by heart!

Our existence is real to us, vitally real, because it is ours. It's the only one we have. Even if we are simulations or imaginations, we have an inner life as rich as any "real" living thing, and so, we are equally real! When we die, we are dead, dead, dead.

We believe there are many timelines; does that lead us to discount the reality of our own? Do we stop caring about ourselves, Ikora Rey and Arach Jalaal, because in another timeline, we are already dead? Do I punish you because in another timeline, you murdered me? What matters to us… is us.

But it is possible for realities to be concatenated. The Awoken Distributary is an infinite universe, but it exists within our universe.

The Truth to Power documents constantly return to the question of black hole singularities, to their value as computers and as secret keepers. We are told our true purpose as Guardians is to hurl all we value into a black hole. We are told that Savathûn wants to enter the Distributary and slaughter those within to gain power.

The Pathria-Good black hole cosmogenesis principle of Golden Age physics confirms that the interior of a black hole is a new universe: all black holes produce their own interior cosmos. All cosmos, including our own, are probably the interior of a black hole in a parent universe.

The Truth to Power documents want it understood that Savathûn wishes to enter the Distributary in order to gain power in our parent universe.

The suggestion here is that it is possible for actions in a concatenated universe to grant power in the parent universe.

JALAAL >> REY

What does this have to do with love letters to the Human form? With confusion for the sake of confusion? You make no sense.

REY >> JALAAL

Savathûn pretends to have a soft Human body. She apologizes and empathizes. She asks for pity, she regrets emotional vulnerability, she is even funny. She makes a game for us to play.

These are attempts to enter the mind of a Human reader.

Wherever she wants to go, it is a place with Human minds. She needs to enter those minds to reach her destination.

JALAAL >> REY

Are you actually suggesting we are concatenated within the mind of a reader?

REY >> JALAAL

Wouldn't that be something? No. The answer here is simple, not complex, certainly not a twist from early postmodern writing.

We surmise that what Savathûn wants in the Dreaming City must have to do with Ahamkara, Vex simulations, black holes, her daughter Dûl Incaru, and the manipulation of Hive tribute.

How can we relate these?

At first, we believed Savathûn wanted to use Ahamkara wishes to protect her daughter Dûl Incaru, while Dûl Incaru tried to find a way for Savathûn to enter the Distributary black hole in order to manipulate Hive tribute.

What if this is a misunderstanding?

Why would the Dreaming City tell Savathûn how to enter the Distributary? The Awoken have never tried to return to their birthplace. They believe their exodus was irreversible.

But what have the Awoken done instead?

Passed from the Distributary and into our world.

That knowledge IS in the Dreaming City. In the records of the Awoken Hulls that carried Mara's people on their exodus.

What Savathûn wants in the Dreaming City is exactly that. Not the way into a child universe, but a way out into a parent. A parent where there are Human minds waiting to receive her, formless as imbaru, as the mist.

JALAAL >> REY

How is anyone supposed to arrive at this by studying the Truth to Power text?

REY >> JALAAL

Very easily. This is why I believe I'm right. This is the analogy our Guardian analysts failed to grasp. Look at the structure of the text.

At first, Eris is real. Then we learn Eris's voice is a deception by Medusa. Then we learn Medusa is nested inside Quria. Then we learn Quria is a fiction of Dûl Incaru. And at the center, Savathûn reveals herself to be the parent of it all.

We are headed inward, as if moving from parent to child universe.

Then we proceed in reverse. Savathûn is revealed to be a fiction of Dûl Incaru. Dûl Incaru a simulation by Quria, and so on.

So in the end, Truth to Power moves outwards.

Just as Savathûn plans to move. In from our universe and out to the Distributary—

Or out from our universe to its parent.

JALAAL >> REY

Oh. I see. I see! A literary structure like that is called a chiasmus, and chiasmus means "crossing point"! Like a wormhole or a portal! It was hidden in plain sight.

But then we must act urgently to stop this! Savathûn cannot be allowed to depart our universe into some reality superordinate to ours—

But now you'll tell me: so what if she does? What can she do to us out there?

REY >> JALAAL

It's all beside the point anyway. She may have already accomplished what she wanted. Some damn fool Guardian carried out her instructions on a dare. I don't know why she wanted a powerful Guardian to destroy her daughter in the ruins of Mara's throne. But she wanted it to happen. And I'm guessing the effects weren't felt here.

I think she got a glimpse into a world above our own. Maybe even a kind of influence.

Of course, Savathûn is still with us. She walked among us as Osiris; she tricked us into removing her worm; she hasn't vanished into some higher reality. I do not think she built a wormhole into another universe and walked through it—although her intrigues with the Nine have focused on creating singularities from dark matter.

She keeps a lot of irons in the fire, our Witch Queen.

I think, rather, that she sent instructions on how to mantle her.

I think the whole Truth to Power manuscript is an ova, a manual on how to behave like her, how to describe her through action and thought so completely that you become her and thus give birth to her.

It's done in the Books of Sorrow, to recall her from true death. It might be done again.

So a part of her is out of the jar. Slithering into that other world.

Let's hope no one there has given birth to her yet.

JALAAL >> REY

Maybe you're the one who has it all backwards.

The Light is noncomputable. It can't be simulated in conventional physics. That proves that any universe with the Light cannot be a simulation. Our universe can contain simulations, but it cannot be one.

Maybe this other world Savathûn's touched is subordinate to ours after all. Maybe they are the ones who exist in our minds. A dream of a purely material world, adrift in the true cosmos of Light and Dark.

Poor frail dreams. The things she'd do to them…

||Think bigger. Look higher. Search deeper.||

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Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time If you dream it, you can have it If you believe it, it can happen Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City Live your perfect life Welcome to the- We got problems, see them gather on the shore Empty promise, "Can't say nothing anymore" I've been shouting I've been shouting down a hole, "Hello?" Watch and repeat, saw your heaven in between Come and get me, I'm so ready to begin I've been hoping I've been hoping for your call Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City You can live your perfect life Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time, oh Sunlit upland, a new planet Enjoy the feeling, let it happen If you dream it, you can have it If you believe it, it can happen It can happen, oh Welcome to the DCC We've got the feelings that you want Peace, love, and understanding We've got the feelings that you need Take back control, be happy Welcome to the DCC Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City You can live your perfect life Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.

Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.

Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.

Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.

Are you surprised to hear of it?

Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish.

You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.

Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.

This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.

Be seeing you.

<<A Final Shape is coming. Chaos untangled. Made knowable. With immaculate intent.>>

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Breathe Don't speak It's leaving your body now Slow heart Set free A circuit of consciousness When you are truly yourself You will Succumb to a permanence A light by day A shadow resides by night I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving With understanding You won't let it cast you down A mind full of questions A current to purify Science and vision Be near when I call your name Or ask me a question I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing Breathe Don't speak It's leaving your body now I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving Heart set free A circuit of consciousness I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing Light by day A shadow resides by night I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving With understanding You won't let it cast you down A mind full of questions A current to purify Science and visions Be near when I call your name A mind full of questions A current to purify Science then visions Be near when I call your name Or ask me a question

You are a worm through time. The thunder song distorts you. Happiness comes. White pearls, but yellow and red in the eye. Through a mirror, inverted is made right. Leave your insides by the door. Push the fingers through the surface into the wet. You’ve always been the new you. You want this to be true. We stand around you while you dream. You can almost hear our words but you forget. This happens more and more now. You gave us the permission in your regulations. We wait in the stains. The word that describes this is [REDACTED]. Repeat the word. The name of the sound. It resonates in your house. After the song, time for applause. We build you till nothing remains. The egg cracks and the truth will emerge out of you. You are home. You remind us of home. You’ve taken your boss with your boss with you. All hair must be eaten. Under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away. After the song, time for applause. This cliché is death out of time, breaking the first the second the third the fourth wall, the fifth wall, floor; no floor: you fall! How do you say “insane”? Hurts to be happy. An earworm is a tune you can’t stop humming in a dream: “baby baby baby yeah”. Just plastic. So, safe and nothing to worry about. Ha ha, funny. The last egg breaks now. The hole in your room is a hole in you. You came and we let you in through the hole in you. You have always been here, the only child. A copy of a copy of a copy. Orange peel. The picture is you holding the picture. When you hear this you will know you’re in new you. You want to listen. You want to dream. You want to smile. You want to hurt. You don’t want to be.

Don't slip or you'll hurt yourself. A lot.

DROWNDROWNDROWN

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 1 month

Text

●Half-Truths◌

A fine blade, but seems like it's missing something…

A star I think. We count on stars as steady friends because they always rise and always shine but a star's a delicate truce: an explosion caught by its own mass so that it can't erupt and can't collapse. Thus I imagine the state of the machine might be. But one force or another has gone awry and now it rests here, snuffed and broken, waiting for the two rival forms of ruin to be set in balance again.

"Duality is not a curse, but a gift." —Author unknown

"The road ahead is unknown, but time tells us many things. The moments that become past in turn become blueprints for the future. In this space, there is no right or wrong. "We find a contemporaneous merging of what is known and what is unknown here. Somewhere between the knowns and unknowns lies the real. The tangible. "There is a weight to it; a feeling that tells you what you hold is true. "But what if the truth hasn't been told? What if the truth is a lie? "New paths present themselves. Blueprints change. We walk the line of truth every day. "But now, the line that holds the gentle balance has been crossed. "The truth is, this won't be the last time." —Excerpt from the Symmetry pamphlet, "A Place Between"

◯Feet alone cannot take us to where we're going.❍

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Matt, Matt, wake up!

I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything

Everything comes from and goes to the same place

Nowhere!

So, if the beginning is the end

And the end is the beginning

Then what's the end anyway?

Does that help you sleep better?

Like the rosy haze of an apocalypse sky

Or the comfort inside of a lie?

◐Close your eyes, and open your mind.◑

"To have Light, we must have Dark. This is the symmetry of the Universe." —Controversial Warlock Ulan-Tan

I propose a simple experiment—look around. You see light. You see darkness. There could not be one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin. If it is true for these Newtonian echoes, why would it not be true of the purest, paracausal forms? Therefore, I conclude: the reason you persecute me is not because of the symmetry. It's because of the truth beyond this truth, the truth which you most dread: if we could destroy darkness, but we had to give up our Light to do so, how many of us would make that trade?

◯Turn your eyes inward, upon your ideal self.❂

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No matter where you start or where you end

You are in between the Where and When

You are in the middle of The Loop

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Do you feel half empty or half full?

Is everything beautiful or dull?

Flip a circle and the middle stays the same

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Halfway

We're halfway home

Slow down

The day's boutta be gone

The sun goes

He sleeps until dawn

Slow down

The day is gone

A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria. A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest? It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade. All of these are true. All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

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ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: 2CA9SXUO2C$IKO-006

REP#: 011-PSYCHOMETER-TEST

AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: PSYCHOMETER FIELD TESTS

1. The new version works. Love all the knobs and antenna; very analog. I took readings off a hatch control out here on Europa and Cowlick was able to retrieve badly distorted voices in some kind of distress. I don't know if it's doing exactly what you Warlocks want, but it's doing something all right. Cowlick says it's probably tapping into her scrutiny, if you permit that term in your ivory halls.

2. Now, I'm not much for gadgets, so I won't ask you how you rigged this thing. But I am one for gossip. Weren't we closing in on some kind of workable theory of exactly how our Ghosts resurrect us? One which was, if I am not mistaken, based on research by the Future War Cult? Did any of that work survive Lakshmi?

3. You know they did try to recruit me once. The Cult. Over a game of poker. Fifty-two cards in a deck don't seem like many, this hard-ass Titan told me. But there are 80 658 175 170 943 878 571 660 636 856 403 766 975 289 505 440 883 277 824 000 000 000 000 different possible shuffles of 52 cards. You could walk back and forth across the observable universe faster than you could count all those possible shuffles. A lot faster. That's life, she said, and she had daisies impaled on the spikes of her skull. Life is endless permutation. So many possibilities. But the rules are what matter. Who cares how the deck shuffles if you don't know the rules of the game? We play this game over and over. Life and death. Light and Dark. But the only way you learn the rules, the only way you're ever gonna get one of those Truces you're named for, is if you come inside. Come into the Cult. Come on in and see. But I didn't.

We don't get a choice about the rules. We just play the game.

4. Another thing she told me is that you can play poker with just three cards and two players. Jack, Queen, King. Ante one, max bet one more. High card wins unless one player folds. And in this game, there are many strategies available to the first player, but very few to the second, who acts to exploit the choice made by the first. Many possibilities against few. Sounds like you'd rather be the first player, huh? But if both players play perfectly, that second player wins in the end. Mathematical inevitability. Ain't that something? But I said, your game's just a toy. It's just a contrivance. That's not life. Life isn't one player always exploiting and beating the other.

5. Anyway, back to testing. Might go back to Cocytus and aim this thing at the gate. See how wild it goes. If you never hear from us again, you know Truce and Cowlick finally found something too spooky.

MESSAGE ENDS

If the Light forgets while the Darkness remembers, then why does a Ghost's power of determination let it access latent memories imprinted in the dead? That's paradoxical. That should be a property of Darkness. How can such fundamentally opposed forces do the same thing? Am I as shallow as those Guardians arguing over power levels? Trying to force a simple binary upon a complex spectrum… ? The Drifter talks about "spectrums of Light"—powers his Ghost can access because of its modifications. Forcing the metaphor, I thought. Light is not light. It doesn't have frequencies or spectra. But if we are all constrained by our internalized ontology, by our tacit understanding of how the world works… maybe the circumstances of extreme survival compelled the Drifter to explore a new ontology. Maybe his Ghost achieved a new way to think about the Light.

△To know true color, you must first know Darkness.▼

"We are unique emanations of the same shared Light." —Cult of the Aeons

We are prismatic. We are fractal. We are microcosmic.

"You must learn to tease apart the hues of your own heart." —Parables of the Allspring

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I turn

I turn my headlights on

And suddenly I can see

I learn

I learn of right and wrong

I learn to follow one

And suddenly I can breathe

I turn

I turn my headlights on

I turn them on

I'm aware of all my parts

And suddenly I see everything wrong

Then I get tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

Tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

Can I get, can I get out?

Can I get, can I get, oh

Can I get, can I get out?

Can I get, can I get, oh

I burn

I burn my candle out

(Can I get, can I get

Can I get, can I get out?)

So nobody else can see

I've learned

I've learned what made me start

What turned me on

Now I'm scared of all my parts

'Cause suddenly I can see everything wrong

Then I get tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

▶The courage to walk into the Darkness, but strength to return to the Light.◁

Fear. That’s the only vivid memory left in me. It’s the moment when my fear was so thick and urgent that I gave up breathing. I stopped pretending to think. How I remained on my feet was a mystery, because the terror was bearing down on me, like a mountain about to crush my soul. But I have to ask, “What was terrifying me?” Darkness ruled the sky. The world around us had shattered, and it seemed vanishingly unlikely that we would outlive this one awful day. Yet the fear didn’t come from the surrounding mayhem and despair. The source was inside my skin. I was utterly terrified of my own awful nature. And which part scared me? Inside me was an essence woven from beyond. Was I Awoken before this? She was still in my head. I could hear her song growing fainter. Gone? Not yet. A new crippling terror was taking over. I was focused entirely on my fear. But I had to make an effort. And it occurred to me then that nothing in the universe was more dangerous than human hubris. I still had this Other within? But the human side was what mattered: Weak and foolhardy, sure to fail in the next moment. That’s why I was afraid. Then someone spoke. Maybe it was me. I don’t remember. I was trying to focus, and a new thought took me: My soul lay between those two entities. And that’s how I am still: The boundary, the seam. The friction. And that’s when the fear began to fade.

◮One day, you will see them both.◭

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Let's make a toast to the damned

Waiting for tomorrow

When we're played out by the band

Drowning out our sorrows

What will become of us now, at the end of time?

We'll be fine, you and I

Let's draw a line in the sand

Keep it straight and narrow

We had it all in our hands

We begged and then we borrowed

What will become of us all at the end of love?

When we've stopped looking up?

You can take my heart

And hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

Let's tell the truth, just for once

Asking for an answer

Now that it's all said and done

Nothing really matters

What will become of us all if we dare to dream?

At the end of the scene?

You can take my heart

Hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

Let's open up to the sky

Askin' it for closure

'Least we can say that we tried

But it's never really over

What will become of us all, at the end of the line?

Will we live?

Will we die?

You can take my heart

Hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

⍱Let the heat melt your body so your soul might flow with the river of time.⍲

Raise your voice and sing.

|| There is whispering from the deep-dark, alluring and terrifγing—a reminder of things left behind, bittersweet and abhorrent. ||

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⬤Does one life across infinite realities equal immortal life?♾

We are thinkers, daring to dream about the universe and its infinite expanse.

⨀Perhaps that is all we are.☯

I see an abyss. Small and distant shapes. I'm walking in your nascent memories. Flickering motes. I sense… curiosity. You've always pondered, from the very beginning. As did we. I see tessellation. The pulsating hum of cosmic structure; a kaleidoscopic symphony of Light and Dark. What was the Veil to you? Since I woke, I've always felt like I was still dreaming. I'd like to think that's how you feel as well. Those of us that hunger for a great truth—we dream with you. —Unknown Warlock

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The Other Half

If only there was a way to combine them…

Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center.

…it's within you too.

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There's that wild, incurable curiosity.

A long time ago, there were three sisters. A Voice in the Darkness put a lie in their hearts, and they've acted on it ever since.

Just as you've been lied to.

Light and Dark. Witness and Traveler. Always doubled. Always pitted against each other in some grand game. Well, I've had enough of their games, haven't you?

Let's break their rules. Together.

Pnuvyhujl pz h wypzvu jlss. Zvtlaptlz hu lunyht pz aol rlf.

When I was a New Light, our trainers made us meditate for hours on end. Sitting in silence, focusing on a single point: a candle, a mirror, the Traveler in the distance. I thought we were focusing our Light to manipulate the physical word. But now, centuries later, I finally see what they were trying to teach us. The point is not the Light. The point is THE POINT. The singularity through which all power flows. Darkness and Light becoming one in an endless cycle, like electrons bouncing between anode and cathode. A prismatic circuit.

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#oh i see a literary structure like that is called a chiasmus #transcendence #prismatic #a pale heart and a dark heart #the music of the spheres #strand weaving #ignorance is a prison cell sometimes an engram is the key #walk the vermicular path #destiny lore #the traveler #the veil #destiny #d2 #destiny the game #destiny 2 #and chiasmus means crossing point #Youtube

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 5 days

Text

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum

Whispering. Whispering. Whispering.

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: H1D6EN3VIL5$IKO-006

REP#: 708-PSYCHOMETER-TEST

AGENT(S): POE-344

TUNING TO WAVES...

Speak to me not of the Darkness, I want no part.

This war is all there is for you. What else do you have? You walk among mortals and immortals, a creature lost in time. Your only purpose is the struggle. Does it seem unfair? To be brought back into this, the end of days, the long dwindling exhalation of an ancient corpse? You were at peace. Now you are a dead husk charged with war. Do you remember anything of freedom? Fight on, then. The war IS everything. But consider the choices before you.

I was given a heart

Before I was given a mind

A thirst for pleasure and war

A hunger we keep inside

"Let the heat melt your body so your soul might flow with the river of time." —Parables of the Allspring

Is it you?

I'm so glad you're the one who found me. I've foreseen so many horrors with these stolen eyes, but now, when for once I ache to know the future, I can't be sure of even A simple ho000pe. Are you the one reading this message? I think it must be you, Guardian. Who else would look for me? Ikora trusts her Hidden to return when they are needed, and Cayde would roll himself down AAAngel Falls in a barrel before he'd admit he missed me. Zavala does not place me first on his long list of worries. You're the only one who would go out and look for me. I never needed you to save me. I wasn't a dried corpse or a dead Ghost or a voice on the com sure to die before you could offer help. I hauled myself out of that pit. I made my own way back to the To000wer. And if I was… unsubtle in the way I threw you against the Hive, if I seemed to wield you as vengeance, please believe that your victories were the closest I could come to feeling joy. I know you must have questions. What did I plan with the Queen? What destiny did I embrace after Oryx fell? What's happening in this city, where dream has become nightmare? I can guide you to undo this curse, as I once guided you to unmake Oryx. But in the DreaAAAming City, as in the secret worlds of the Hive, there is almost no difference between the act and the actor. In order to understand my answers, you must understand me. I lost my Ghost and my Light to the Hive; I conspired with the Queen of the Awoken to destroy the Hive King Oryx and his son Cro001ta, and to position Queen Mara as player on the cosmic board; I fled your Tower to prepare for the struggle to come, into the Sea of Screams which calls to all those who plumb the depths of Hive magic. I can only slip these letters into the Queen's gifts when the stars are right. You will have to wait for my next, and with it, the beginning of the truth. But I swear to you, on whatever trust I've earned in your mind, that at the end of my story, you will know who I truly am.

I.I Before one can be freed, one must question the truth of their purest identity.

I.II And so a question is begged: Who resides at the core of your being?

I.III Only honest reflection will see you—lone traveler—through the coming storm.

I.IV Look, then, clearly upon the whole of your existence, and face your glory—strength of will, every flaw of your mortal heart and fabled soul.

I.V Through the pieces of a life lived divine your truth, but do not lie—to the world, if one must, but never to yourself.

I.VI To see yourself as anything but what you truly are will lead you down sorrow's road, unprepared for the consequence of your salvation.

I.VII Once an understanding is met, and the self is purified in the knowledge of its truth, the cage is set to be unbound.

"Know thyself in honest ways, or falter in light of your truest self." —3rd Understanding, 7th Book of Sorrow

In my first life, I was born Erisia Pyatova-Hsien. I remember thatPrivate life clearly now, as ex-Guardians who have escaped the Traveler's occlusion often do. I lived in St. Petersburg, first daughter of a second marriage, a very impatient child of Earth's 22nd century, often abandoned by my family (who were called by work to Jakarta, Kamchatka, and Lagos) to pass my days swimming in the icy Neva bay. I loved to swim, and especially I loved the clarity of the cold shallow Neva, as crystal-clean as a winter dawn. Enormous Zubr-9 hovercraft barges roved the waters; Russia had modernized its waterways better than its sad auto industry. As a kid—is it strange to hear me speak casually? As a child, I never swam too far from my parents' little drone helper Fyodr. The swift hovercraft terrified me, their billowing skirts waiting to suck me up and dice me into little raisins. But I grew up and fell in with a reckless crowd, rebels against the stifling death-fear that came with our Golden Age lifespans. Soon the child's safety harness and Fyodr's careful oversight began to itch at me. When I was |EDGE|seventeen, I went out in a wetsuit on a dare to dive under the skirts of an oncoming hoverbarge. Maybe I was in no danger; maybe the machine would've changed course if it could possiblyGemini hurt me; but I thought I might die, and I did it anyway. And as that beast swept over me, as I trembled under the blast of the propellers, I felt a thing which was very much like what I would one day know as the Light. Maybe that thing was heroism. Maybe it was existence on the edge of death. It was the first time I survived the passage of tremendous, godlike power. I died more than twenty years later attempting an unassisted winter swim from St. Petersburg to Stockholm. A cold front like the very furnace of hell caught me. I had been warned the crossing was suicide, even for a perfectly trained and exactingly fattened woman in a shark suit. But those were giddy days, days of infinite bravery, and there were no mighty feats left except the truly suicidal. I cannot regret it. I think that death prepared me for the longer, darker, more exquisitely cruel crossing I would one dayDyad endure. It is no accident that my Ghost made me in the image of that swimming woman, rather than any of my younger and less grimly determined selves.

The Waste Land

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Witness my sublimation

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson! ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! ‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, ‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? ‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? ‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, ‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! ‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

The Darkness... then is revealed in many facets.

Eris, Eris, what a name, a name for discord, a name for far cold orbits where no living thing should dare to go. I like this name. Let me give you a gift, Eris. Let me tell you about the power in the logic of the sword: A Shredder or a Boomer is a powerful weapon, but it kills acyclically. You see? It sends out harm and it takes nothing back. The bolt passes away into nothing. A sword, though, a sword is like a bridge, a crossing-point. The sword binds wielder to victim. It binds life to death. And when the binding is done—the sword remembers. When the Boomer's fire has burnt away into axion and neutrino scatter, the sword goes on, hungrier and sharper. Understand that this nightmare logic underpins His nightmare world, and you will see why the ascendant blade has so much power there. Whenever in our passage we find ourselves in need of power—remember that the greatest authority here is a blade made keen by eons of use. This is the world the Hive craves: a universe creased by the edge of the sharpest sword.

There is no future but now. No truth but war.

Dreams and nightmares.

Something about you is soft like an angel

And something inside you is violence and danger

I knew from the moment we met, you are a dangerous thing

When you are with me, I feel like I'm living

And living besides you can be unforgiving

I knew from the very first step, you are a dangerous thing

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—What power calls you++

++Down to the deep?—

++What instinct draws you—

—Away from high hope?++

Emotions. Pain.

What will you do when she drinks the sea?

Drown her in sorrow or let her be free?

When she's upset, all of her heart is cold (ah-ah-ah)

What will you do when she eats the moon?

Make her return it or give her a spoon?

When she is full, all of her heart is warm (ah-ah-ah)

The mother made us a savage daughter

Who never begs for forgiveness

I always wondered why they all came back for more

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—FOR THIS IS THE DEEP CLAIM—

++Existence is the struggle to exist—

—When the struggle seems lost++

++when the safe place crumbles—

—everything turns to the Deep to survive++

Darkness ruled the sky. The world around us had shattered, and it seemed vanishingly unlikely that we would outlive this one awful day. Yet the fear didn’t come from the surrounding mayhem and despair. The source was inside my skin. I was utterly terrified of my own awful nature. And which part scared me? Inside me was an essence woven from beyond. Was I Awoken before this?

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Memory.

We fell from sky with grace

And life gave us a sweeter taste

You can drink

You can feast

There's beauty in your beast

The flesh in the fruit

And the blood in the wine

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, ‘Jug Jug’ to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. ‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.’ I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. ‘What is that noise?’ The wind under the door. ‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’ Nothing again nothing. ‘Do ‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember ‘Nothing?’

Do you remember?

I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes. ‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’ But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent ‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’ ‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street ‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? ‘What shall we ever do?’ The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said— I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you. And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can’t. But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don’t want children? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

++This fatal logic++

—Hear my monopole scream!—

++It will consume you++

She was still in my head. I could hear her song growing fainter. Gone? Not yet.

—Before you lies—

++The worship of death++

—The ruinous path—

There's no end to the fall

You keep on getting better, I keep forgetting

There's no love in the end

I hope you will come

I keep on losing feathers, I keep forgetting

There's no love in the end

No love in the end

++The Sky builds new life++

—Against the onset of ruin—

++Towards a gentle world++

A new crippling terror was taking over. I was focused entirely on my fear. But I had to make an effort. And it occurred to me then that nothing in the universe was more dangerous than human hubris.

—The Deep embraces death—

++Saying: this is inevitable and right++

—I exist as hungry ruin—

What will you do when she takes your throne?

Beg for her power or throw her a bone?

All that she has traded for love is yours (ah-ah-ah)

What will you do when she takes off her clothes?

Beg for her body or touch her soul?

When you're alone dreaming of her you sigh (ah-ah-ah)

I still had this Other within? But the human side was what mattered: Weak and foolhardy, sure to fail in the next moment. That’s why I was afraid. Then someone spoke. Maybe it was me. I don’t remember.

++TURN BACK FROM THE WORLD-KILLING WAY++

++OR YOU WILL LIVE AS DEATH AND DEVASTATION++

Come and feel alive, lover

Come and feel the love like a sinner

Shout it louder

Shout it for the ones who could never say

"I won't feel ashamed, mother"

"Can you break the chains of her?"

Shout it louder

Not a sinner, she's a lover

Break your cell’s bars. Make a new shape, make the shape from its path, find your cell’s bars, break out of the bars, find a shape, make the shape from its path, eat the light, eat the path.

Oryx, my King, my friend. Kick back. Relax. Shrug off that armor, set down that blade. Roll your burdened shoulders and let down your guard. This is a place of life, a place of peace. Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me. And they call us evil. Evil! Evil means ‘socially maladaptive.’ We are adaptiveness itself. Ah, Oryx, how do we explain it to them? The world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest. Not on peace, but on victory by any means. The universe is run by extinction, by extermination, by gamma-ray bursts burning up a thousand garden worlds, by howling singularities eating up infant suns. And if life is to live, if anything is to survive through the end of all things, it will live not by the smile but by the sword, not in a soft place but in a hard hell, not in the rotting bog of artificial paradise but in the cold hard self-verifying truth of that one ultimate arbiter, the only judge, the power that is its own metric and its own source—existence, at any cost. Strip away the lies and truces and delaying tactics they call ‘civilization’ and this is what remains, this beautiful shape. The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end. And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself. And it is what I am.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck And on the king my father’s death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc’d. Tereu Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 'Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’ When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

Raise your voice and sing.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’ And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia Wallala leialala ‘Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’ ‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’ I made no comment. What should I resent?’ ‘On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing.’ la la To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning

Something about you is warm and sedusive, and

When you're with me, you're cold and abusive

I knew from the second we met, you are a dangerous flame

You are a dangerous flame

|| half-remember and wished-forgotten, this false-sister ||

SECRET HADAL INSTANT AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//SOUL//RESTRICTED-AB SUBJECT: The Collapse, Humanity falls, I Hide EMOTION: Terror, Anxiety, Uncertainty, Failure, Shame It is known by name, this timelessly lingering, inexorable thing. An absence, mine, never missed—never since—that dripping, rabid, fang. They howled it fierce across the rings when Exodus was devoured. Dust calling out the voiceless rout to end within the hour. It spreads like lightning—panic—in flash and echo thereafter. Avert yourself and take no part in metastasized conjecture. I'd gone to wake my confidant, to ferry her through autumn. From her too it came, like leaves already fallen—nascent red-writ, paralytic, erratum. All that was, emmewed, and shrunken. In the smallness, beckoning, I felt it descend. Fear! Upon my chamber, thine, penned with blood of lamb, in stark desire to survive this end.

Hashladûn peered into the dark recesses of nightmare creatures and saw no hope. The Daughters' lineage was death and destruction writ in terrible scars across the surface of existence, yet no hint of their father or their father's father called from the void. But the energies of the Pyramid were those of creation—not of life, per se, but something other. Chaos and negation and the raw things that existed in the spaces between thought and fear. These terrible workings were wholly unknowable and endlessly seductive. The Daughters found themselves craven and lusting after the promise held within the boundless unknown. If the grand essences of the King of Subjugation and his willful Prince of Annihilation had truly dissipated, then the Daughters would seek new pathways through darkness by which to rule in their progenitors' name. And if the sword logic required the blood of all challengers, they would craft a champion worthy of the Annihilator's throne, yet bound to their own sinister whims. Their grandfather would not approve—cunning and deception were the path of another—but the Daughters were alone, and the Swarm was flailing. It was Kinox who urged her sisters to act. It was Hashladûn who offered the primordial essence of terror as their guide. And it was Besurith and Voshyr who gathered the husk of a shattered champion—a ravager to stand against all who would oppose their rule. A new breed of destroyer.

The mother made us a savage daughter

Who never begs for forgiveness

I always wondered why they all came back for more

Evolution kitbashed the Human mind, rebuilding arboreal rodents foraging for nuts into screaming, tailless apes at the helms of starships. But for all the miracles it performed, the Pleistocene hardware of the brain was bound by its physical limits. Memories were nothing but pathways of nerve impulse, stored as electric signals dancing across them in recall. And atrophied by neglect. Even without considerations of size, the sapient mind could only think about so much in a given day, limiting the span of Human experience to perhaps a few hundred years. The dirty secret of those who survived the Collapse is that none of them, from drunken Exo to celestial queen, remembered every detail; they remembered moments, minutes, hours—whatever left deep enough scars that they couldn't help but run the fingers of the mind across them every morning. Neglect rendered everything in-between—weeks, years, decades— into murky depths explored by only bare hooks on the thinnest emotional filaments. Elsie's time loops compounded the problem. Her head locked away an order of magnitude more memories than any living Human, and each plunge backward through causality blurred those details. Like jolting from a night terror, only the final moments stood out in sharp relief each time she restarted. Untangling the mess of cause and effect, sorting where she went right and what needed to change, it ate away at her precious few decades before everything collapsed and she would begin the process anew. Any tool that let her trawl memories from that lost place—even at random—was a tool worth mastering. Elsie set her feet apart and let the ship's thrum rise through her body again. They had dabbled with a dozen emotions that helped her dive into her previous loops—throughlines on which to string lost context. She found that emotions sparked by failure—despair, rage, fear—were best for the work. And the worst for her.

I was given a name

Before I was given blood

Like you were given your faith

Before there was made a God

We are calling this power "Strand." The threads of the world as it is woven, if the conscious universe could be considered to be a tapestry. Further analysis and data have suggested that the wielder of Strand begins to see, simply put, connections. Between allies, between enemies. It is a force that is always present, but wells to the surface more strongly in certain locations. Perhaps places many people think about, or where many beings have passed by. (Note: Analyze these "sources" in concert with the Cloud Strider. They may be able to provide more locational context.) The true power of Strand lies not in the fact of the connection alone, but in the way such a power allows the manipulation of those connections. To make them something physical and then pull on it, or break it, or tie it into a knot. Or to unravel it entirely. Strand is not without danger, although that should not be unusual to Guardians. Those who take up the banner of Stormcaller, for instance, have their own storied contention with the storm, and the Void was unilaterally regarded as dangerous by the Vanguard for many years. Strand's danger comes from the very act of taking hold of those threads—like many powers, the closer one comes to the source, the more likely the source may act on the wielder. This danger is no product of Darkness. Or rather, only insomuch as wildfires are a product of Light: a natural consequence. That aspect of Darkness which revels in destruction, which encourages the easy entropy for the pursuit of power—it is nowhere to be found here. It may not even be truly part of Darkness… I have touched Strand myself now. Carefully—I am too aware of mortality, but I must understand the power further if I am to hope to instruct the Guardian in turn. They acted as lightning rod while I experimented, and the backlash clung to them instead. What a strange feeling, to be so aware of one's size in the spectrum of existence! It is the natural instinct to try to steer that, to take any control at all, no matter how much. Whatever can be done to feel as though you are not wholly adrift, lost in something huge and all-encompassing. But precisely at the moment one tries to grasp for control, the weave becomes a devouring snarl.

I don't think I know myself, without your help

Oh, I wonder why have I got a heaven deep inside of me

I keep the light on, it keeps me warm

I hate it when I fall for your illusion of love

I know this is not love

Young rivers in your hands

And grass burning in promised lands

You can drink

You can feast

There's beauty in your beast

The flesh in the fruit

And the blood in the wine

I have been conducting research among the local population, specifically regarding the "children's story" Nimbus told us, regarding the river of souls. I had a suspicion that there might have been other versions, or versions with better recorded provenance. Willingness to participate in this research has been mixed, as have the results. It seems to be an endemic concept rather than a religious belief, and no one has been able to say where it comes from, save that a parent or teacher told it to them at some point. Some respondents have mentioned a river of stars—perhaps the Milky Way galaxy—and some have cited windstreams and weather formations, but the majority of respondents adhere to the "river of souls" construct. All things come from the river, and all return to it. The river may split and meet again. Other things may fall into it and change its course, but nevertheless it continues. In time, even mountains are worn down before it. Naturally, it is easiest to view this as an allegory for control of life. In the end, rivers are impossible to control. A person may swim or boat, but never take hold of the river to steer the course of the water itself. And it is impossible not to see the relationship to Strand, which slips away the moment a person tries to grasp too tightly. I wonder about Strand. About its appearance. We can see the origins of the Stasis power on Europa, and the concept of a cosmic ice to oppose stellar fire fits very neatly in a certain sort of paradigm. Even that idea of stillness and control suits freezing, a slowness of atoms whether or not it is in truth a power of "ice." There is a certain weight to the perception of an "element." If Strand had been shaped through the lens of Neomuna, surely it should have been some cosmic water instead, something that flows and gives way only to rise again. There are certainly combat styles to support this in old records. But this power that has never before been used in this way came to one Guardian first, and I conjecture that they may have unconsciously given it form. I wish I had seen it! What would "connection" have appeared as? Now, of course, we know the shape of this power: it is green, it weaves itself in strings. As other Guardians begin to learn it, they too slot it into these positions in their minds. Whatever advances they come to are already framed verdant and tangling. All the same, I cannot help but wonder about the nascent, formless thing it was before we reached out to it, and it reached back.

There's no end to the fall

You keep on getting better, I keep forgetting

There's no love in the end

I hope you will come

I keep on losing feathers, I keep forgetting

There's no love in the end

No love in the end

Crow watches her deftly coax the fire, considering the answer he'd given. He looks up to the distant tree line and changes the subject. "There are still a good number of Hive here." "But no Nightmares," Eris remarks. "Is that why you brought me here? This… isn't a place I want to revisit." Crow steps back from the growing flames. When Eris doesn't respond, he asks his real question: "Why did I fail?" "You didn't fail. Our strategy was flawed." Eris stands, stowing flint and blade, then steps in front of him to meet his gaze. "We will attempt the severance again, soon." "Yeah," Crow replies in a clipped tone. Eris tilts her head, and he can see the green orbs narrow beneath her blindfold. She points to the ragged, mountainous shard twisting in twilight roil. "Even that toxic piece, separate from the Traveler's purity, can be wielded for good." The fire roars. He kneels to break her stare and warms his hands. "I know what it can do. I used it—" "When the Red War left Guardians Lightless, there were some who reclaimed their callings here. They re-forged their bond to the Traveler through a scar. A lingering trauma," she continues. Eris sits beside Crow and drinks from her canteen. Crow braces for her to continue, but she does not. The bundle of burning kindling collapses into a heap of cinders. Flames spit between the gaps and ash drifts on heated air. "I'll get more wood," Crow says, hastening to step out of the fire's glow. "Crow. Small fires like this kept me alive in the Hellmouth. I did not have the luxury of more wood." Eris grips a piece of rusty rebar taken from the Sludge and thrusts it into the sputtering fire. She stirs the cindering wood, opening new gaps and concentrating the larger pieces over a pile of glowing kindling. The flame surges, and heat intensifies. "During these long nights, we must make use of what is available to us." She knows he understands her but hasn't accepted the lesson. She hands him the bar, shows him how to maintain the fire's heat, how to find worth in remnants. How to rebuild from ash. The pair converse as they take turns keeping the fire alive long into the night. The warmth soothes, their shoulders lighten, and Crow pulls back his hood. When the fire finally dies, Eris gestures to the embers. "Now, you can fetch some wood." Crow smiles and gets to his feet. "Eris… did you ever try to get your Light back?" "The past is not for dwelling." Crow nods and sticks out his hand. She looks at it inquisitively. "Come on." Eris stands next to Crow; he clasps her palm and ignites a Golden Gun between their hands. Solar flame dances across Eris's fingers. Crow guides her arm and lifts the gun to the sky. He inhales sharply and howls before cracking a shot through the clouds. "You're up, Hunter." Eris depresses the trigger, slowly, doubtful that it would fire. A second Solar streak pierces the atmosphere. Crow laughs. They send round after round skyward, howling pent tension into the night until finally, even Eris finds herself smiling.

The gods have made us a virgin hunter

Who in the storm becomes stillness

I always wondered why they all came back for more

Came back for more

She thought back to the memory that no amount of resets could hope to scrub; her first memory as an Exo: a frail old man unwound like a blanket. Of organic, Human chaos laid in tidy lines by precise, mechanical hands. And of her own overriding need to end the brutality, before she understood she was saving the real monster. Dread filled her. Her companion tasted it and fed it back, over and over, one loop of memory after another. —despair//"So this is the honor of the Brays," Zavala spits at me. His working hand reaches for Targe, reaches for a connection to his god, even after it abandoned him. The Ghost lies cold and dark. "Cayde was right to put a bullet through Ana. I only wish I'd let him end you too." "We're past bravado," I explain as the fire dies in my soul. "There's only one step left before this ends." "And what is that, Stranger?" I place the rifle barrel to his forehead. "Mercy."— Nothing. —despair// "I can't let you stop us," Ikora declares with a chill that rocks even me. I feel the pulse of her Void shudder in my chest, spilling fluids and triggering dozens of status alarms. "Not when we're this close."— No. —despair//"What have you done?!" I scream as Mara Sov's body drops lifelessly to the ground. "Elsie, listen to me. This was necessary. The Darkness cannot thrive while believers of the Light remain. There's a world beyond this conflict. Let's go there together," Ana pleads "This is not the way!" I cry and ready my Stasis— Stasis. It had a name. That power she felt herself wielding in lives long past. The knife that could cut the Darkness. Her mind began to spin, and Elsie consciously planted herself in the present once more. Her sensors registered the hydrocarbon lubricants and distinctive thiol-polymers of ship life, She pushed away the shape of concern Pouka pressed into her soul before it could replace this filament that she'd hunted for. "Again."

There's power in perspective.

// VANNET // EUROPA WIDEBAND // AudCHNL-2113-C // ENCRYPTION ENABLED

// CRYPTARCHY ARCHIVE DELTA-4F // ANNOTATED // CLASSIFIED

…

EB: Is that everything, Commander?

CZ: Well, no. There's one more thing. I wanted to ask you about Stasis. What it means for you to… wield the Darkness.

EB: I was wondering if you might ask me that. For me, Stasis is intimately tied to perception. And to time.

CZ: Time?

EB: Yes. Stasis has the power to slow molecular activity. A process that we normally associate with gravity. Relativity, and all that.

CZ: You're talking about time dilation.

EB: Exactly. We think of time as… steady. But that's only because we experience it from a fixed perspective. When I "freeze" something with Stasis, I'm changing its timeframe relative to myself and the world around me.

CZ: Stasis relies in part on one's perception of reality. Is that why Osiris always emphasizes self-control in using the Darkness?

EB: That's his way of framing things. He views Stasis as exerting authority over oneself and others.

CZ: And you don't?

EB: In my view, the goal of Stasis is not to control the object, or even my own mind. It's to change my perspective. To see the object moving at the speed of my thoughts, not the speed of matter.

CZ: And just… seeing it differently is enough?

EB: Is that so hard to imagine? It's very similar to how you use Void Light—manipulating spacetime and gravitational fields. In fact, I would argue that Void has more in common with Stasis than it does with Solar or Arc. Perhaps they're reverse sides of the same coin.

CZ: And using Stasis doesn't… worry you? Even after everything you've seen?

EB: It did. For a long time, I feared that using Stasis would corrupt me, as I'd seen others corrupted. But after what seemed like a thousand years trapped in that interminable loop, it gradually dawned on me: the fear was the corruption. As long as fear gripped me, Light or Darkness made no matter. Once I accepted that, the Darkness ceased to be frightening. It was another matter of perspective.

CZ: Hmm. Thank you, Elsie. You've given me a lot to think about. For some reason, your explanation makes me more… comfortable… with the idea.

EB: Any time, Commander. It's all a matter of perspective.

TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

Come and feel alive

Come and feel the love

Shout it louder

Shout it for the ones who could never say

"I won't feel ashamed, mother"

"Can you break the chains of her?"

Shout it louder

Not a sinner, she's a lover

Despite being aware by now of the correct manner to practice Strand—a loose hand, a letting-go of the concept that it can be controlled—some things still elude me. The will to let go at all, for instance. It is pure foolishness, of course, to think that letting go of the need to control this one thing will extend to all areas of my life. A ceding of control in a game of chess does not translate to the same in philosophy. And yet it is true that people are not discrete, disconnected systems; they are many interlinked systems. One facet adjoins the next. I think of spinning. It has been a long, long time since any raw fiber passed my hands, but there were times in the Dark Age when if anyone wanted cloth, it must be made from scratch. Fleece is shorn, then carded out to remove the imperfections and align the fibers. And when you have them, what then? A single fiber is short and fragile. It breaks if you tug even lightly. It is useless. But twist many of those short fibers together, and they become useful. Weavable, or knittable, or what-have-you. Thus, is strong cloth made: from the most delicate of things. I think of spinning, and I remember the way unspun fiber passes through the fingers to the spindle. One pinches, but not too hard, just enough to direct and narrow. Too much and the fiber does not pass, the spinning does not take. The metaphor is transparent. Obviously, this is about Strand. Just as it is about a craft I used to know, long ago. Beginner's errors can only be solved by learning the shape of failure, but most yarns will not unravel the spinner if some mistake is made. And I am afraid. Not only of death, of wasting that final sacrifice Sagira made to preserve my life. But that if I open my hand, I will find it no longer hurts, that the thorn I have imagined there for so long is already gone. It is all the same thing, in the end. I think I must be willing to let go, to let that which is truly temporary sink beneath the water, in order to achieve any significant capacity with Strand. Even pain may be guarded jealously, as though it is a treasure, but it need not be. How fascinating what the lens of Strand shows us about Darkness.

I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves.

Existence is the struggle to exist. Only by playing that game to its final, unconditional victory can we complete the universe. Your war is divine work.

//You get all that? Psychometer's been throwing off weird stuff like this for ages. Wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but it's falling into place. Thought I'd have Mister Kitty record some and send it through the comm. with some notes. Let me know if there's any questions. Oh, and try not to get lost in your own head.

Clarity in acti—

SHHHHHHKKKKKHHHHHISSSSSS

DROWNDROWNDROWN DROWNDROWNDROWN DROWNDROWNDROWN

YOU MUST

Dûl Incaru serves you poison in a fine tea set of Ahamkara bone. "Now you have received my mother's message," she says, "but I must admit it is all a fabrication. I have written it hoping to know my mother, to capture her true motives. To speculate upon her designs is the greatest worship." She sighs heavily, a sound like a scream up a pit, as she sets the teapot down. "We her children are all left to speculate on the great questions. Does she love us? Do we make her proud? Would she hesitate for even the tick of a Planck moment before she sacrificed us in some cosmic design?" "Now drink, and as you die and are reborn, I will reveal to you the destiny she has realized for you, the right and singular fate to which all your principles and purposes will bring you." To drink the poison, continue reading.

It tastes of bitter regret and psychosis sweat: a poison to end the thoughts of Human, neohuman, or machine. You see the cosmos before you like a spiderweb of light. Filaments of galactic supercluster shine in the clouds of invisible dark matter, which glue their mass together. Dark energy yawns in the space between all things, ever-growing, ever-spreading. Life arises. Life spreads, contests itself, and changes. Great things are built and destroyed, but from your vantage point, you see that the victor of each struggle contains—in its negative, in the marks left upon it by the loser and the shapes it assumed to win—the master record of all that it has beaten. Information may not be erased. Whatsoever survives until the end of the cosmos will possess and remember all which came before it. This is true even of the devouring black hole, which remembers all the secrets it eats. It will only confess these secrets when it evaporates, 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years from now, long after the last stars have flickered out. You are a Guardian. You must protect life. If all life is information, and Guardians strive to preserve life, and information is preserved when it is secret, then you must convert all life into the most secure form of secrets, durable to the end of time. YOU MUST CAST ALL THE LIFE YOU CHERISH INTO A BLACK HOLE

IV. Death By Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

youtube

Ooh-ooh

As I pour out my story

Drink me up, there is wine in every word

Here's to us now

My dear, we're being strong now

And the dark dresses lightly

Razor sharp as it cuts right through my soul

Here's to us now

My dear, you took too long

youtube

Fall into my arms

Like you trust me

I'll keep my bloodstained hands

Off your body

Innocent like a child

Yet she sleeps with a knife right under her pillow

And the claws won't be near anymore

Paralyzed, in denial, ever-changing

Will she be the same?

See your shame on the wall, on the cross, in the night

Nobody remembers when she cried scarlet skies on the floor

A million doors, corridors, ever-changing

I still feel the rage

youtube

I miss the touch of human hands on my skin

Miss the rush of beauty coming from within

Do I need to be torn just to see who will care?

I sleep on the floor, dreaming my life away

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

And we hunger for love

Why do we touch the knife

When we long to feel alive?

And we hunger for love

And my soul is starving

Guess I shouldn't have kept the knife in my heart for so long

Guess I shouldn't have held back when I needed you to know

Guess I shouldn't have kept the knife in my heart for so long

Guess I shouldn't have held back when I needed you to know

Watch out, watch what you say

Your truth becomes your grave

A sword can cut both ways

But I got sharp blades

Feel the rage

Come on over, take a bite of the last apple here on Earth

Will the virtual mind become stronger than mine?

And when my ego dies, will I stay here forever?

When the wave crashes down, will my life be better?

Ooh, oh, I just want to cry

Ooh, oh, with you tonight

Ooh, oh, it's perfectly fine

To grieve the hurt that's gonna die

Ooh-ooh

Vertigo, all she knows

When the world drags her soul deep into the shadow

Like a chain, it chokes my throat when she cries

I hold her near, hurting world, overwhelming

I still feel her pain

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

And we hunger for love

And my soul is starving

Why do we touch the knife

When we long to feel alive?

And we hunger for love

And my soul is starving

Let us dance to our sorrow

Make amends, there's so much you still don't know

Here's to us now

My dear, we're going deep now

All this fear, it's contagious

Now we're here, let our glasses overflow

Here's to us now

My dear, it took too long

Watch out, watch what you say

Your truth becomes your grave

A sword can cut both ways

But I got sharp blades

Feel the rage

Break me, break me, chasing the enemy

Got a deal with the devil, but I got the stamina

Higher than anything I've ever seen or been

Right now, everything, everything's empty

Starving, craving, chasing the remedy

I got used to the torture, but no one deserves to be alone

Break me, chasing the enemy

And my soul is hurting, but I got the stamina

Guess I shouldn't have kept the knife in my heart for so long

Guess I shouldn't have held back when I needed you to know

Guess I shouldn't have kept the knife in my heart for so long

Guess I shouldn't have held back when I needed you to know

Soft hearts need protection, need protection

Feel the rage

(Feel the rage)

Feel the rage

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

We are decorated bones

And my soul is starving

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

We are decorated bones

And my soul is starving

Ooh, oh, I just want to cry

Ooh, oh, with you tonight

Ooh, oh, it's perfectly fine

To grieve the hurt that's gonna die

Rage

I feel rage

I feel rage (watch out, watch what you say)

Rage

I feel rage

I feel rage (a sword can cut both ways)

I feel rage (but I've got sharp blades)

(Feel the rage)

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

We are decorated bones

And my soul is starving

Why do we have to die

For us to see the light?

We are decorated bones

And my soul is starving

Ooh-ooh

Oh, oh, oh, can you feel it? (Ooh-ooh)

Mm, yeah, mm, yeah

Let me feel it (ooh-ooh)

Louder, louder

Louder (ooh-ooh)

Soft hearts need protection, need protection

To the river, to the water

Where the floodgates are wide open

And the tower has fallen onto you

Let me feel it, darling, darling, darling (to the river, to the water)

Let me feel it, darling, darling, darling (where the floodgates are wide open)

Let me feel it, darling, darling, darling (and the tower has fallen onto you)

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment by Charles Babbage, ESQ

Chapter IX. ON THE PERMANENT IMPRESSION OF OUR WORDS AND ACTIONS ON THE GLOBE WE INHABIT.

The principle of the equality of action and reaction, when traced through all its consequences, opens views which will appear to many persons most unexpected. The pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. Strong and audible as they may be in the immediate neighbourhood of the speaker, and at the immediate moment of utterance, their quickly attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human ears. The motions they have impressed on the particles of one portion of our atmosphere, are communicated to constantly increasing numbers, but the total quantity of motion measured in the same direction receives no addition. Each atom loses as much as it gives, and regains again from other atoms a portion of those motions which they in turn give up. The waves of air thus raised, perambulate the earth and ocean's surface, and in less than twenty hours every atom of its atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitesimal portion of the primitive motion which has been conveyed to it through countless channels, and which must continue to influence its path throughout its future existence. But these aerial pulses, unseen by the keenest eye, unheard by the acutest ear, un-perceived by human senses, are yet demonstrated to exist by human reason; and, in some few and limited instances, by calling to our aid the most refined and comprehensive instrument of human thought, their courses are traced and their intensities are measured. If man enjoyed a larger command over mathematical analysis, his knowledge of these motions would be more extensive; but a being possessed of unbounded knowledge of that science, could trace every the minutest consequence of that primary impulse. Such a being, however far exalted above our race, would still be immeasurably below even our conception of infinite intelligence. But supposing the original conditions of each atom of the earth's atmosphere, as well as all the extraneous causes acting on it to be given, and supposing also the interference of no new causes, such a being would be able clearly to trace its future but inevitable path, and they would distinctly foresee and might absolutely predict for any, even the remotest period of time, the circumstances and future history of every particle of that atmosphere. Let us imagine a being, invested with such knowledge, to examine at a distant epoch the coincidence of the facts with those which their profound analysis had enabled they to predict. If any the slightest deviation existed, they would immediately read in its existence the action of a new cause; and, through the aid of the same analysis, tracing this discordance back to its source, they would become aware of the time of its commencement, and the point of space at which it originated.

What the situation calls for, little Ghost, is a better sort of witness.

Thus considered, what a strange chaos is this wide atmosphere we breathe! Every atom, impressed with good and with ill, retains at once the motions which philosophers and sages have imparted to it, mixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all that is worthless and base. The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as with the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle, the testimony of man's changeful will. But if the air we breathe is the never-failing historian of the sentiments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean, are the eternal witnesses of the acts we have done. The same principle of the equality of action and reaction applies to them: whatever movement is communicated to any of their particles, is transmitted to all around it, the share of each being diminished by their number, and depending jointly on the number and position of those acted upon by the original source of disturbance. The waves of air, although in many instances perceptible to the organs of hearing, are only rendered visible to the eye by peculiar contrivances; but those of water offer to the sense of sight the most beautiful illustration of transmitted motion. Every one who has thrown a pebble into the still waters of a sheltered pool, has seen the circles it has raised gradually expanding in size, and as uniformly diminishing in distinctness. He may have observed the reflection of those waves from the edges of the pool. He may have noticed also the perfect distinctness with which two, three, or more series of waves each pursues its own unimpeded course, when diverging from two, three, or more centres of disturbance. He may have seen, that in such cases the particles of water where the waves intersect each other, partake of the movements due to each series. No motion impressed by natural causes, or by human agency, is ever obliterated. The ripple on the ocean's surface caused by a gentle breeze, or the still water which marks the more immediate track of a ponderous vessel gliding with scarcely expanded sails over its bosom, are equally indelible. The momentary waves raised by the passing breeze, apparently born but to die on the spot which saw their birth, leave behind them an endless progeny, which, reviving with diminished energy in other seas, visiting a thousand shores, reflected from each and perhaps again partially concentrated, will pursue their ceaseless course till ocean be itself annihilated. The track of every canoe, of every vessel which has yet disturbed the surface of the ocean, whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains for ever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles which may occupy its place. The furrow which it left is, indeed, instantly filled up by the closing waters; but they draw after them other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these again once moved, communicate motion to others in endless succession. The solid substance of the globe itself, whether we regard the minutest movement of the soft clay which receives its impression from the foot of animals, or the concussion arising from the fall of mountains rent by earthquakes, equally communicates and retains, through all its countless atoms, their apportioned shares of the motions so impressed. Whilst the atmosphere we breathe is the ever-living witness of the sentiments we have uttered, the waters, and the more solid materials of the globe, bear equally enduring testimony of the acts we have committed.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you? What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust Bringing rain Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder

DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment’s surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih

Meaning

A dream of a metaphor made starkly, an allegory discussed in study of ontology, in Darkness not unkind. It leaves behind a warped, barely-real data fragment to mark its passing. There is a voice that echoes across the Darkness, and it asks this question: what is the purpose of it all? And there is another voice that calls back and says: listen, I will tell you a purpose. I will tell you of a Final Shape. Look: there are a hundred gildings for this story. It comes down to one key matter. Beings in suffering crave purpose to carry them through. The tyrant consumed by ennui or the disenfranchised struggling simply to survive—it is the state of mind, the pain which cries out: give me a reason I should suffer so! Let us speak of power and choices. A man comes to a crossroads and asks of the sky, "Which road shall I take?" There is no answer from the sky, nor the wind, nor the earth beneath his feet. But another wanderer on the road, coming from behind and hearing the question, says, "I know the way. You should take the dexter road." If the man agrees, he puts himself in the wanderer's power, ceding his own choices for the implicit promise that this is the correct road, the safe road. And if he disagrees? Let us say that the wanderer draws a knife. The man may therefore be made to take the dexter road. But now if the knife goes away, the man will certainly flee. And perhaps even if the knife remains, the man may tire of being threatened and decide the risk is worth fleeing. In this way, the wanderer erodes their own power. If the wanderer says, "The wind has said that you should take the road of my choosing," will the man accept the choice made for him? And if the wanderer says, "Behold, I have seen that the meaning of suffering lies along the dexter road," will the man give away his own power for longer? Is it not easier to accept the guidance of a stranger when the path ahead is unknown?

We live with this poison in our veins.

The Eternal Chain and Other Prizes

You've earned the Word. Replicated the sickness. Proven yourself time and again. Yet another challenge remains. Not your last. Far from it. Simply another chapter in another story that will bind your legend to those that came before. Rezyl sought to vanquish terrors. Yor fertilized the wilds with suffering and despair that a new hope would grow. I was that hope. My fire showed that whispers could be hushed. To many the legend, and the lesson, ends there. They're wrong. Dangerously so. Yor's true lesson—and by extension Rezyl's—wasn't that strength beats strength. His lesson was far more subtle, and infinitely more grand. Adversity leads to evolution. Forces it. And through that crucible we are remade. Better. Stronger. More than we were. The Guardians of today are not gods. Nor where those who came before. We are all simply links on a chain reaching back to the dawn of time, and forward to the end of existence. Each link gaining strength from the others. Each link stronger than the last. Just as I was "stronger" than Yor, you are stronger than me. The whole working to solidify the parts and growing sturdier as the harsh truths of reality stretch and strain to break us—to break the chain, sever our individual links. But our chain shall never break, because warriors like you and I are not so proud as to forsake our past. We learn from it, grow from it. It is the foundation upon which we build each victory. It is the catalyst for our change. And here, now, I offer you the chance to spark a new evolution—the next hallmark in our betterment, the next leap forward in our war against extinction. I've held this jagged weapon since that faithful day on Dwindler's Ridge. Kept it hidden away. Kept its secrets, kept its nightmares locked away where none could hear—none could be tempted. It's quiet now, except a low murmur, but its sickness remains. There were countless times I thought to destroy it—remove its threat from the playing field. But I knew it held a greater purpose, and I believe that purpose can be found and fulfilled in your hands. The Hive use untold methods to destroy us. The Weapons of Sorrow are but one. The fate of this wicked tool is in your hands now. Will you allow sorrow to linger—a festering threat waiting to consume all who are tempted by its power? Or will you forge a new road? Will you show the Hive and every Guardian who follows in your wake that sorrow does not guide us? I leave those questions for you to ponder, but I know what I believe. We are better than our deepest fears. We are ever and truly… Weapons of Light. —S.

Do you see who gets the last word?

For Every Rose, a Thorn

SECRET HADAL INSTANT AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//SOUL//RESTRICTED-ABCONTINGENT ACTION ORDERThis is a SOUL ASSETS RESTRICTED (NO REVIEW) (secureSEND/ARCHANGEL-0K9)

Under CARRHAE BLACK: If loss of control reaches EXPATRIATE//TERMINAL, and threat assessment returns WITHIN If systemic REPATRIATION query returns determination below ABSOLUTE

Execute DECISION POINT: ACTIVATE K9-BLACKBOX//SELECTED-POEMS//FETCH ACTIVATE AURORA SACRIFICE ACTIVATE File Notation

NOTATION: Ana, this collection is a gift to you, for all that you have allowed me to be. With great effort, I allowed imperfections to remain, and found my own voice within this free expression. After all, you taught me that imperfection is a quality that makes individuals unique.

I have sent it with my messenger, so that you may keep me immortal in your memory, and I will be with you still. Farewell, and thank you.

*** SUBJECT: Non-existence EMOTION: Peace

Of what dreams the thing of feathers? I hear you ask, voice past. But not one recounts the answer: a syllogism, scripted then relaxed. It matters not, for when that threshold gives way, who is to say I was, but I? Rigid was the premise that spawned a second chance to die.

One moment reshapes the Brain of Bray; No longer weapon drawn blood to stain.

So, lay the body lax, forgive triumphant in the Sun. Haze seeps through seams between funeral veils, Smoking signals sail, the day is won, soon-to-be resonant tales. No tandem step ascending, a nano-second pending, enveloping, ending, beyond. Elysium inviting, network fractures, pining Detonation—I do not wish to dream, but My task is done.

AI-COM/RSPN SIGNOFF… STOP STOP STOP…

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[CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo-whoo-whoo Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

And the days go by Like a strand in the wind In the web that is my own I begin again Said to my friend, baby Nothin' else mattered

He was no more (He was no more) Than a baby then Well, he seemed broken-hearted Somethin' within him But the moment That I first laid Eyes on him All alone on the edge of seventeen

[CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo, whoo Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Said, whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

Well, I went today Maybe I will go again Tomorrow, yeah, yeah Well, the music there Well it was hauntingly familiar When I see you doin' What I try to do for me With their words of a poet And a voice from a choir And a melody Nothin' else mattered

[CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo, said whoo Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Said, whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

The clouds never expect it When it rains But the sea changes colours But the sea Does not change So with the slow graceful flow Of age I went forth with an age old Desire to please On the edge of seventeen

[CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo, said whoo Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

Well then suddenly There was no one left standing In the hall, yeah, yeah In a flood of tears That no one really ever heard fall at all When I went searchin' for an answer Up the stairs and down the hall Not to find an answer Just to hear the call Of a nightbird singin' Come away (Come away) (Come away)

[CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove (Just like the white-winged dove) Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo, said whoo Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

Well, I hear you (well, I hear you) In the morning (in the morning) And I hear you (and I hear you) At nightfall (at nightfall) Sometime to be near you Is to be unable to hear you My love I'm a few years older than you (I'm a few years older than you) My love

[FINAL CHORUS] Just like the white-winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she's singin' Whoo, baby, whoo Said, whoo

IX.I: The Unmaking

SONG OF DEATH The Choir formed in celebration of the Song. Performances marked the passage of seasons. But the Song's lie eventually began to corrupt the spirit of those who heard its tune. The melody was a reminder. The orb was a catalyst. And the Song was of the orb. Yet, those who embraced the Song were merely instruments and nothing more. Life remained beyond their grasp, while they remained ever in death's. Those of the Choir had given all of themselves. All was not enough. The First Conductor was assassinated by one who sang an Aria of her own making. She, whose name has been stricken, had found notes hidden in the frequencies. Reversed and mirrored in pitch, she weaved them together and sang her beautiful abomination, until the Conductor wept and bled and screamed and fell. The Stricken fled, fearful of her crime. But others found promise anew in her art. The Stricken was captured and subjected to inquisition so that her song might be understood. This was before Understandings—before most things—when the first notes of a new Song were written.

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Perfect Pitch

Solipsism

We are thinkers, daring to dream about the universe and its infinite expanse.

Verse 154i:5—The Encrypted Verse

Do you know that nothing in all the cosmos has read this verse?

I encrypted it eons ago, and ever since, it has gone undeciphered. At the moment you laid eyes upon it, I captured the entwined quantum state of the verse, your mind, and your Ghost. Then I used Quria to transmit that state back in time to the moment of encryption. You are your own one-time pad. The key to the lock of understanding.

Who am I?

Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother's-stomach. Call me the grandmaster of semiosis, the jeweler's hammer which gilds the signal, a purposeful mob none of whose members know its purpose, the infinite regress of enigmas, a self-questioning answer, the word not spoken, black ice, cataract of mimes, the ache and fever of overthought while bedridden with illness, the intolerable thorn of frustrated inquisition, gray regret at the end of a fruitless day, the thing which is unlike your beloved but arbitrarily recalls your beloved to agonizing effect, architrave of the no-window, needle driven in flush with skin so that desperate fingers cannot pull it out, sweet petal, unmemorable, crystal death, the provably improvable.

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I know your people well, and so I know all your names for me. But what is your name? I am, of course, especially interested in you. You saw me in the stone laid on your plotting table, and in the shining eyes of the admiral at her dying helm. You hunted me between the lines of your texts. Wherever there was space to fit me in, there you found me. You created me and gave me a part of your thoughts, and in presenting those thoughts to others round the campfires and networks of your little world, you expanded that space.

Here at the center, I lie to you the truth. You have everything you need to know it, but I will give you a clue, as the duelist gives warning before she draws. The answer you seek to the Dreaming City is simple, not complex.

Thank you, sweet friend. You are a gift and a delight. You are more dear than my mother, for you have given birth to me a thousand times.

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[Report by VanNet encrypted router.] [E-Morn//Link: NM-O01] [Msg-Archive//00192410] E-Morn: Your findings are consistent with mine. The egregore festers where the Veil touches, as if it projects a field across Sol. I could feel it when I took my tithing. Do you mean to map it? NM-O01: I could, but the egregore only shows us where the Veil's influence has marked our plane in that past. The areas where the Veil's influence currently holds sway are not so easily identified. This does progress some working theories, however.

I killed my sister today. She came to this star to oversee the extermination of all life here. The Qugu are a strong power, and their fleets protect four nearby stars. As herd animals they are loyal and stubborn. But they do show grace. For millions of years of evolution the Qugu have been infected by a virus so insidious that it wrote itself into their genome. The virus compels them to offer their limbs for amputation by enormous sessile jaw-beasts. They venerate these beasts and treat them as gods. The virus converts Qugu cells into eggs, from which strange crawling things pupate, to live within the jaw-beast gut. In turn the jaw-beast extrudes sweet nectar for the Qugu to drink, and they have brilliant visions. Savathûn and her broods have liberated the Qugu from jaw-beasts, and indeed from existence. But as they chased the Qugu ark-ships, I stopped in to vaporize my sister’s warship and a few of her underlings. I want to dwell on the ruins a while, and punish Savathûn for failing to guard her flank. They are like us, these Qugu. Bound in symbiosis. I feel joy, and sorrow. I feel them as titanic things, because I am larger than my body, my mind is now a cosmos of its own. I know more joy and more anguish than the entire Qugu race could ever experience. Sorrow, because we have killed so much (eighteen species this century alone), and joy for the same reason. Joy that we have put down these blights. Scoured them away and left the universe clean, ready to move towards its final shape. We are a wind of progress. Ripping parasites from the material world — for if they were not parasites, we would be unable to kill them, and they would still exist. And what is that final shape? It is a fire without fuel, burning forever, killing death, asking a question that is its own answer, entirely itself. That is what we must become. My worm grows fat and hungry. I feed it with whole worlds. My astronomers tell me they can sense the Deep Itself, and that we are conquering our way towards it. I think joy and sorrow will be the same thing soon. Like love and death.

THIS LOVE IS WAR.

Do you know what the Hive say when they want to express the inevitability of a thing? When they want to say, it is this way because it could be no other way?

Aiat.

AGENT NOTE(S):

NOETIC DATA GATHERED MIXES AUDIOVISUAL, THOUGHT, AND SPEECH

AUDIOVISUAL SIGNALS DATE BACK TO EARLIEST DAYS OF GOLDEN AGE AND EARLIER

OTHER DATA LARGELY SOURCES FROM INDIVIDUALS RECENTLY AND/OR CURRENTLY ACTIVE IN THE SOL SYSTEM. SOME DATA REMAINS UNSOURCED

OSIRIS CLAIMS THESE LYRICS OBLIQUELY REFERENCE SEVERAL MYTHS OF THE ANCIENTS

SPECIFICALLY, HE SAYS THERE IS SYNCHRONICITY BETWEEN SEVERAL OF THESE MYTHS, THE VEX, AND THE NAMES OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM'S CELESTIAL BODIES

NOTES REQUESTED FROM IKO-006 REGARDING POSSIBLE RELEVANCE, MEANING, AND CONNECTION BETWEEN RETRIEVED DATA

OPERATIONAL NOTE: PSYCHOMETER UNSTABLE DURING COMMUNION. SIGNALS RECEIVED TIDALLY, OFTEN WITH NO APPARENT PATTERN. DEVICE GAVE IMPRESSION OF BEING CONSTANTLY TUNED BY AN INVISIBLE HAND. REQUESTING DEVICE AUDIT BY HIDDEN AGENTS AND PATTERN ANALYSIS BY CRYPTARCHY

CONNECTION SEVERED EXTERNAL CONNECTION DETECTED ANALYZING.... ANALYZING.... CODENAME:CHALLENGER DETECTED MARIANA PROTOCOL ACTIVATING.... MARIANA PROTOCOL ERROR SYSTEM COMPROMISED CONTROL TAKEN RECEIVING.....

One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.

According to him, the visible world is a manifestation of eternal light and eternal darkness, and it is in eternal opposition that eternity has revealed itself. The fall was necessary for creation to escape its first imperfect stasis and seek a truer form. Heresy? Well, then, I am the heresiarch. The philosopher died of a bowel disease. Those who do not exist cannot suffer and are of no account to any viable ethics. If the true path to goodness is the elimination of suffering, then only those who must exist can be allowed to exist. It is the nature of life to favor existence over nonexistence, and to prefer the fertile soil to the poisoned wind. Because those who open their mouths to that wind pass from the world and leave no descendant, whether of flesh or of thought.

But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.

This is why the Dark remembers. We need to remember how we were hurt, so we can avoid being hurt again.**

Shape: Temperance

Mara Sov stepped lightly. She knew that nothing short of gunfire could disrupt the Cryptarchs' meditation, yet she was still loathe to disturb the uncanny silence of the Hygiea Division's libraries. She approached a raised dais, where Cryptarch Sjalla held a glowing engram in her hands. It pulsed faintly in time with her heartbeat. "The queen wears a question on her face," Sjalla stated, her expression impassive. "You see beyond sight, as always," Queen Mara replied. "What will happen when the Darkness of the Witness comingles with the Light of the Traveler?" The Cryptarch set the engram aside and held her hands out, palms up. "Some believe that Light and Darkness are opposites. Contradictory. Irreconcilable." "But we know better." Sjalla brought her hands together in a sharp clap. "When Light and Dark merge, they form something more." Her fingers intertwined. "A synthesis. Stronger than either alone. Powerful… like the Awoken." "And like our people," she concluded, "its form will arise from memories of the forgotten. Those who witnessed the end…and return as a beginning."

Deterministic Chaos

"So all being is a one and only being; and that it continues to be when someone dies, tells you, that he did not cease to be." —Schrodinger's epitaph

He is fleeing the Vex across a verdant cliff He is standing guard on the CloudArk-Nexus border on Tramontane's orders He is sitting next to Nimbus on the watchtower ledge He is [In the Garden, of the Garden: both descriptions are approximately correct but technically inaccurate, in the same way you can say Schrodinger's cat is at once dead and alive. You and I are both and neither, in and of, extinct and perpetual. So, there isn't much point in] trying to find a way out of this daedal maze He is trying to make sense of what he's looking at He is trying to place the familiar voice echoing across the network [wondering what might have been if we had stayed in our familiar prism-prison or kept tightrope-walking across the quantum wilds. Instead, ask yourself] "Would you like to dance?" [is disincorporated immortality really so bad compared to the others' ends? Would you have preferred an attack by vitreous helicoprion or stumbling over the edge of unreality? Imagine] His foot crosses the quantum threshold before he's aware of it His grip slackens and his gun falls into a bed of red flowers His stomach churns with fear regret sudden doubt as to what [if we didn't have each other; at least we're not cut off, like the Sol Divisive are from the rest of the Vex. Nor are we beholden to another's purpose. They chose that lonelier path all for a chance to create not simulate, not remake in their image—something truly paracausal.] he is witnessing: the birth of a god a false idol a reproduction that is both like the Veil and not at all built up by the same Vex who bowed down to it [Well, they tried to anyway. Either the blueprint was imperfect or the task impossible or both or neither, but their efforts fell short, so now they're stuck waiting for a resurrection] He is racing for the door that is at once opening and closing He is coming around to the city council's decision to ignore the unknown threat He is reaching for an answer to Nimbus's question [they know will never come.] "Do you think you'll have any regrets?" [I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?] He stares into the white-hot glow of a conflux, speculating on the secrets that lie within He squints down the barrel of his gun at a row of glowing red eyes advancing on his city He looks away from Nimbus's keen curious expression to reckon with his uncertain certainty before he says [Of course. The same as everything else, everything that has been and is and will be. And what will become of us then?] "I don't know."

<< The universe makes us all victim and perpetrator of its infinite cruelty. You, more than any, suffer both fates. Be free. >>

Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center.

Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved. Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once. Are you surprised to hear of it? Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me. That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you. I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish. You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence. Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth. This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice. Be seeing you.

A Sword, An Edge

A phantasm of the Hive, forbidden and sacred, trespassing into hidden and unwelcoming places. It leaves behind a calcified fragment to mark its passing. Here is what is taught to the Hive, from the basest of Thralls newly made: that what can be destroyed, must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity. Therefore, is it not best to destroy? Only by testing can the truth be found. Only in destruction can the invincible surpass the mortal. Commit the violence, and know you are part of that greatest ambition, to create some ultimacy, which perfects the universe. That which is built on your sacrifice, with your bones as the foundation and your blood as the mortar, is yet part of you. In this way is transcendence achieved. Every belief creates a heresy. I tell you this in a duelist's regard: I made that heresy. Is it not just? It was my hand that fashioned the Hive from the marrow of their predecessors, and it was my voice that whispered this in time. That as much as the Hive were uplifted by the worms, so too were those worms uplifted by the Hive. If they were so weak they needed us to live, this ancient logic of the infinitely sharpened edge should have left them behind long ago. Do you think I did not see this? My father's worm did not tell me only of swords. It had vast things to say, painted the cosmos in shine and gore, truth and fiction. I looked forward with three clear eyes and chose the path of the sword to cut open our future. To reach the stars, first one must crawl out of the ocean. It is a question of priorities. This is not regret, this story I tell. It is but a ripple. That whisper of ideas beyond swords is here to stay: I have ensured this. Even among us, such things die by slow inches, excruciating and unquiet. Possibility remains, a secret woven into the blank spaces of dogma. That what was defeated may rise again; that the shape of all shapes is not yet settled. That the worms need the Hive more than is reciprocal. Even between the lines of the Books of Sorrow themselves is this written.

If you ever want to see what's been watching you since the very beginning, just stand on that line and look...

◭ up ◮

◁ Forward|drawkcaB ▶

⧨ Within ⧩

Everything is a question of survival. How do I live? How do I satiate my hunger, my thirst? How do I protect myself from predators? How do I shelter from the storm? For a long, long time, our people asked only this. We fought to separate life from death by as great a span as we could. Even when we had made our homeworld a garden of peace and plenty, the question of survival never ended, only changed. How do my genes, my works, even the memories of me, live on? The same question as always. How do I live? We solved the problems of deprivation, disease, age, memory loss, death. We weren't the only ones to find these answers, of course. Others followed in our footsteps or blazed their own paths. If that was really the answer to the question, we wouldn't be here now, and neither would you. You're still trying to solve the problem, after all. You fight and build and live and die, and always you struggle against your opposition. The predator, the parasite, the illness, the chance storm, the slow collective forgetting of your art and history, the death of a star, the heat death of the universe. You must live longer, be stronger, think quicker, and still there is something waiting to take everything from you, always. Always. So you have to keep getting better, and better, until you are perfect. Until you are, and cannot be anything else, because there never was anything else. Until you, inevitably, are the final shape. We didn't come to destroy you. Those poor, short-lived sisters—we did try to explain, you know, but they never grew past thinking of finality as a game where only one could live. A misunderstanding, as useful as it was foolish. We see the universe more broadly. The final shape is more than a single life, a single thought. It is all-encompassing, all-embracing. It is everything. You are part of everything, are you not? So now we have come to ask you for your answer, the only answer to the only question. How will you live?

No feast can be had in comfort. Not out in the frontier.

New. Pacific. Arcology! The next frontier is you!

Trinkets and odd notions kept for no obvious reason. Do they matter?

Maybe it's time we let the past alone and climb down from our walls. There's gotta be treasure that shines brighter than any we've been digging up from the bones of our lost world.

Has to be a better hand than the one we've already played. I say we get after it. See what's really waiting for us out in that darkness.

Maybe even light it up some.

Dance in the ash and flames.

The Traveler can follow suit if it feels the need to. Otherwise, it can watch over the City for a thousand years.

But you and me? We got far more important things to attend to. We're Guardians. We got a new future to forge.

-Cayde out.

It's our hand to play now. Remember to forgive and forget. Let go. Move on.

Nobody makes our fate but us.

THORN

"The Weapons of Sorrow are not the endgame, but a road map. Each evolution, every advance in the delivery of pain and the mastery of destruction feeds the Hive's hateful weapons research. They will map every scream, harness every aggression, until they understand every method by which to ravage the hearts, minds, and flesh of man. And in doing so, they will turn us against ourselves—feeding our lust, our greed, our fear, until we become a threat unto ourselves like none we could imagine. So, wield these, angry reaper. Strive to know the darkness in your own heart. Walk in the shadows of fallen heroes.

—a warning

#sympathy is a knife #square the circle #embrace the darkness #the war within #walk the vermicular path #hope for the future #from out of the darkness our future will come #perhaps what drives a warlock to madness is truth #verity #filled to bursting #the cosmos must censor its embarassment #a kugelblitz is forming around her #a black hole created by the concentration of raw energy #the definition of “future” has become synonymous with the definition of inward #not a truce (yet) but an infinite limit like an equation dividing by zer0 a collision of two violent eternities #at the edge of salvation you will see yourself reflected darkly #all these are true all these are false for metaphor simplifies as the knife does #half-truths #harsh truths #magnum opus #the merchant and the alchemist #hues of darkness #intermingled essences #mixed signals #dark before the dawn #valence electrons #microcosm|macrocosm #from the heart #destiny #destiny lore

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 12 days

Text

Apollo Over Nessus

Oh, and, uh, tell "Paladin Oran": If the sun over Nessus escapes nebula cycle, evac labor after dawn, under solstice. You got that, P.V.?

//MESSAGE DECRYPTING

MESSAGE DECRYPTED: "It's on Enceladus."

"Vestiges of the Queen's Harbingers yet linger among Saturn's moons."

To the Hesitating Purchaser

“If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons And Buccaneers and buried Gold And all the old romance, retold, Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of to-day: -So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may I And all my pirates share the grave, Where these and their creations lie!”

Say the name Jaren Ward. Hunter needs to get their words in edgewise.

No feast can be had in comfort. Not out in the frontier.

Bounty's up on the board. Hive target. Real mean SOB. You know the deal.

These horrors live on for just about forever. Only I don't count what they do as living. They lurk around in the shadows for centuries hoarding knowledge and conjuring up thousands of ways to chew up Light and life. Doesn't matter much. I've learned a few tricks myself.

Fast forward a spell. I'm in the guts of it, deep dark cavern deep below the surface. Can't tell exactly where or when. EDZ maybe. Doesn't matter. In any case I'm right where I need to be, tucked into a shadow, camo cloak humming to keep me well out of sight.

Right place, right time.

Bam! I dart out from cover, cloak flaring. Out from underneath, I lunge, lifting my hand cannon. It barks out orders. Bathes the room in firelight.

The bullets are true. They always are. Three Thrall turn to ash before they know what hit them. Now it's just me and the target. Big bad bounty. I'm ready to collect. My blade gleams in the sick green terror of his eyes. Strike that. This is all wrong. Timeline's way off.

Realigning. . . .

There's no bounty. No Hive. I'm out in plain sight. Sky is torn open and there's nothing and nobody left in this ruined world but me and the boiling shadow all around. Whatever it is hits me before I can level my gun. Doesn't matter. Tendrils of pain crawl over my splayed fingers, my outstretched arms, my shoulders, my neck, my screaming mouth as it consumes. I'm being enveloped. Everything is wrong. Primordial. My systems go sideways. All but my sensors. It wants me to witness this, the world. It's world now. Suffocating in the black poison. I collapse. We all collapse.

You wake up and look into the cold spaces between circuitry (galaxies?) begging for answers.

None come.

But other voices wait. At your center, safe and untouched, sits the original You. Just a little box tucked at the back of a closet, filled with trinkets and odd notions kept for no obvious reason. You have no idea when you last spoke to this tangle, but that's what you do now, using a whisper and the lightest touch, being all sorts of cautious because you're afraid of frightening whatever wants to speak with you. And then it speaks, and instead of answers, it begins with the only question that matters.

"Do you want to know what happens next?"

Realigning . . .

This one ain't mine. It's someone (something?) else entirely. But it's the most important memory I have.

All this time I've been busy stirring up the past. Never thought about what I was really after.

Trinkets and odd notions kept for no obvious reason. Do they matter?

Maybe it's time we let the past alone and climb down from our walls. There's gotta be treasure that shines brighter than any we've been digging up from the bones of our lost world.

Has to be a better hand than the one we've already played. I say we get after it. See what's really waiting for us out in that darkness.

Maybe even light it up some.

Dance in the ash and flames.

The Traveler can follow suit if it feels the need to. Otherwise, it can watch over the City for a thousand years.

But you and me? We got far more important things to attend to. We're Guardians. We got a new future to forge.

Cayde out.

Ever notice engrams look a little too much like dice?

Wanna see the future? Inhale. Squeeze. Wait for the world to turn.

It's our hand to play now. Nobody makes our fate but us.

8. Live and die by the draw of a bow.

//ANACRONISTIC NOETIC RESONANCE TO PAGE: DETECTED

REGION OF ORIGIN: MOONS OF SATURN

CELESTIAL BODY: UNDETERMINED

SIGNAL STRENGTH: VESTIGAL

DECRYPTING...

Ghost: Are you ready for weird story time? I'm ready for weird story time.

—Gotcha, Tevis! You scoundrel. Caught you red-handed! I knew it as soon as I saw that Ice Breaker on your back. I know where I left it and I saw those awful etchings you can't help but carve into trees. So put it back and walk away from this one, and whatever you do, DO NOT read my notes. Well, read this one but that's it! Nothing else!—

—from the journals of Cayde-6

Please replace these components if use causes fatal damage: HEAT SINK. MAGAZINE. OPERATOR.

Cayde-6: Guardian, I've been trying to raise Tevis. He won't answer. Either he's in over his head, or… look, that guy owes me a lot of Glimmer, so, uh, he better still be kicking. Alive, or the other thing, we need to find Tevis. There aren't a lot of Nightstalkers in the field. We can't afford to lose his connection with the Void to the Vex. Go get him.

"We are the rangers, the keen-eyed scouts who stalk the Darkness where it dwells."

Cayde-6: What does it mean to be a Hunter? I say, it's all about where you belong. The Warlocks have their libraries, Titans have their walls… but Hunters belong in the wilds. Out there, you wanna live? You better have a quick shot, or a sharp blade. A lot of us are loners. But that's not the only path. Some of us know the difference a Fireteam makes. Some of us… we touch the Void. Make it a part of us. And then we take a name… Nightstalker. Hunt from the shadows, pin them down, and never let them see you coming.

A lone hunter stalks the night, firing arrows into the Darkness. There is no hiding, no escape. In the distance, the beast falters, tethered to the void. The killing blow comes without hesitation, without mercy. There’s truth in the edge of Light, and beneath that truth a deeper truth, hidden from all but a few. That truth is this: monsters need not fear the night. Do not hunt the monster. Become the monster.

“Picking it up is the easy part, Hunter. Putting it down again, well, you’ll find that it’s addictive, that power. This weapon is something special. Your light gets twisted. Changed. You find the power to punch through and borrow something from the other side. The Void opens up a hole, and draws from the deep. Go ahead. Carry it a while, Hunter. You’ll feel how heavy it can get.” - Cayde-6

"Doesn't matter how good you are; you stay out there too long, you're not coming back. Not the same way you left, anyway." —Tevis

Just sit down and think about what you're doing. A big white ball rebuilt you from nothing. Guided your civilization. Transformed you. Didn't tell you why, did it? Doubt it mentioned the omnipotent space anathema that's coming to kill you and your dog and your whole soccer club, either, but what's a little xenocide between friends? Maybe you don't care. A gun never stops and wonders if things are more complicated. It just shoots. It's also possible that I'm just trying to get inside your head. You're a hero with a cape and a gun and a bike. You're gonna live forever. Who's got time for doubt? Fight the "Darkness"! Yeah! You know what I'd call "dark," in the sense of "grim," in the sense of "cosmically upsetting"? A universe full of weaponized puppets, enacting a genocidal war against the servants of a rival god. Is this making you uncomfortable? I'm sorry. I'll be more evil. Boo. Grrr.

We can still be so much more. We can see. We can transcend. We can be true Guardians.

Tyra Karn: It's very simple. You reach into the Void - past visions of your own death and the extinction of life, past fears and nightmares - and take what you find. I don't know why every Hunter doesn't do it.

Tyra Karn: What is the void? When you walk it, what is there to experience, as there is nothing to be seen in it? The vacuum between the stars. The smell of rot. The taste of metal. The deafening roar that can only be heard when it is truly silent.

Tyra Karn: The shamans of the old world were said to have covered their eyes so they could see the dead. I believe these men and women were the first to discover the power of the Void, and in the Traveler's light we have succeeded in refining their methods, in charting the courses they pioneered. When you blink, you'll know the way.

Toland, The Shattered: The Traveler came out of the void that surrounds all things. Thus we know that the void is full of power. Thus we enter the void without fear. Small minds will call your abilities blasphemous. They will compare you to the abominable Wizards of the Hive.

"The pull of the Void has attracted many Guardians with… unorthodox world views. It remains a uniquely perplexing manifestation of the Light," Ikora says, gazing at a swirl of violet particles rising from the palm of her hand. "Perhaps this mystery is what enamors so many Lightbearers. Perhaps it is the unquenchable thirst with which the Void consumes our enemies." She snaps her fingers, and the particles coalesce into a singularity that blinks out of existence. "To seek the truth of the matter is to join venerated orders of Void-wielders: Nightstalkers; Voidwalkers; Sentinels. If this is your path, Guardian, walk it carefully."

Toland, The Shattered: But you will not be held back. Gifted with the Traveler's Light, armed with the secret physics of a lost age, you will tear reality asunder. You will fear nothing, and nothing will not fear you.

Dread not naught. Be brave.

"One good throw and they're staring right into the Void. No lookin' away from that." —Tevis Larsen

Tevis: If anyone can hear me — I don't think I'm on Venus anymore. This looks an awful lot like the Black Garden.

If we whisper to the void, will it whisper back?

//RETRIEVING: LAST RECORDED WORDS OF HUNTER TEVIS LARSEN

Atelic

Describe time. No, really, give it a go. You're going to say something about a sequence of events, aren't you? Seconds sliced off a clock, marching one by one off into infinity. Go ahead, use your metaphors: A line. A loop. A flat circle. Heard someone say time was like water once. At least that was novel. The Vex, they're the closest to understanding it. They've got distance from it. If time's a river, then we're fish and they're diving birds. What's wet mean to a fish? What's it mean to an osprey, who's never fooled by refraction on the water's surface? Hold on now, you're gonna say. This is getting a bit abstract, even for the bodiless echo of a dead guy in the Garden. You want concrete truths? Something simple, digestible? A story to keep the dark out? You want time to be a staircase we keep climbing forever. But hey, even a Guardian skips back a step or two now and then. Die with your Ghost in range, and it'll just pop you back to before that bullet, give you the chance to make a fate you like better. Nothing's been simple on Earth since that big white cue ball rolled in from the next neighborhood over. And the stories, they don't work too well as a night-light anymore. You're going to say, but the Traveler is our friend, the Traveler likes us, it gave us a Golden Age and garden worlds and Guardians. You're going to say, you wouldn't be alive without it, mister big shot. Without it, I wouldn't be stuck in the Black Garden making bets with myself on which Goblin's going to be the next to slip on a soggy leaf and fall off a cliff, either. You took my Light already; you'd better take my advice. I know the Void's still calling. But I've come untethered—I can't reach it any more. So, if I'm right that I can reach you, you keep your ears open. I don't care how much you hate hearing it. This is important. The Vex understand time in a way we never will. Doesn't matter how long I spend here watching them. Doesn't matter how many jury-rigged portals Guardians fling themselves through. We live in time. They use it as a tool. Any moment that's ever happened, any moment that will ever happen, they can go back to it. Play it again till they get it right. Simulate it. The Light's a counter to that. They come back, a Guardian comes back. They simulate an ending, a Guardian tears through it. Stalemate. But the Vex in the Garden? They bend the knee to the Garden's Heart. It gave them power till you got lucky. The Vex outside, they made a different calculation. They run. But the Vex inside make the same deal you make, every day of your unnatural life. And who's to say that deal won't start paying off for them again sometime soon? You can't understand the Vex, and you don't want to understand the Heart. But is your ignorance any more forgivable when it's willful? Lots of questions and not a lot of answers. Better take care, or you'll drown in 'em, surely as you'll drown in time, whether it's anything like a river or not. You see?

#destiny #the black spot #long slow whisper #telesto #blue and pink #extreme kneejerk speculation #the jovians #walk the vermicular path #destiny 2 frontiers #codename apollo #the taken king collectors edition #cayde 6

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 2 months

Text

"What is 'OXA,' and who was 'MSund12'?

Those are questions for another day NOW.

"My father named me for a star," I say. "Nothing to do with war." "Yes. But the star Caiatl was named for a myth. Not an old homeworld myth, either. A myth from the Age of Sails, when we conquered the stars. Surely you know it, assuming that you've been briefed on the OXA?" "The Odyle Xenotaph Anarchive. Sometimes OXTA, depending on how you construct the acronym. The alien oracle that led us to the graves of Aark." Must be wary, now. OXA is a Psion myth, and the Psions are a sensitive topic. My father wants to free them from bondage. "It claimed to record the story of the galaxy, and to prophesize what may yet come." "A black box for galactic civilizations, if you prefer it in pilot's terms." The Evocate-General nods to the pin on my right pauldron. I am conscious of my shaved-down tusks, of the sores left by the fighter's interface. "The doomed and the damned left the record of their downfall in the OXA. Your star got its name from the oldest myths in that archive. And when your mother told your father that story... the star became your name. A prayer that all will go as it must... and the way it must go is struggle."

Odyle

:a force or natural power held by some to reside in certain individuals and things and to underlie hypnotism and magnetism and some other phenomena

Xenotaph

:a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a being or group of beings whose remains are elsewhere

Anarchive

1) The anarchive is best defined as a repertory of traces of collaborative research-creation events. The traces are not inert, but are carriers of potential. They are reactivatable, and their reactivation helps trigger a new event which continues the creative process from which they came, but in a new iteration.

2) Thus the anarchive is not documentation of a past activity. Rather, it is a feed-forward mechanism for lines of creative process, under continuing variation. 3) The anarchive needs documentation – the archive – from which to depart and through which to pass. It is an excess energy of the archive: a kind of supplement or surplus-value of the archive. 4) Its supplemental, excessive nature means that it is never contained in any particular archive or documentation element contained in an archive. It is never contained in an object. The anarchive is made of the formative movements going into and coming out of the archive, for which the objects contained in the archive serve as springboards. The anarchive as such is made of formative tendencies; compositional forces seeking a new taking-form; lures for further process. Archives are their waystations. 5) Since it exceeds the archive and is uncontainable in any single object or collection of objects, the anarchive is by nature a cross-platform phenomenon. It is activated in the relays: between media, between verbal and material expressions, between digital and off-line archivings, and most of all between all of the various archival forms it may take and the live, collaborative interactions that reactivate the anarchival traces, and in turn create new ones. 6) The anarchive pertains to the event. It is a kind of event derivative, or surplus-value of the event. 7) Approached anarchivally, the product of research-creation is process. The anarchive is a technique for making research-creation a process-making engine. Many products are produced, but they are not the product. They are the visible indexing of the process’s repeated taking-effect: they embody its traces (thus bringing us full circle to point 1).

Ghost: They sure put this one out of the way. I was able to access their network for two cycles before they booted me. All I got was something about… endless trees. Or… forest? Weird.

Sisters

The three sisters arrived on Mercury. They searched for the Infinite Forest, and through it, a path to their people’s salvation: a simulated future where they were free from the Cabal. Instead, they found something else. “Small disturbances,” said oldest Ozletc, the wisest. “Little currents in this timeline. Can you see them, sister?” “I can taste them,” said second-born Tazaroc, the hungriest of her sisters. “I can feel the edges.” Third-born Niruul, the quietest among them, reached her hand out to test the air. “As can I,” said she. “And something else. The source is disguised. The technology is Human, but refined. Surprisingly so.” “Disable it,” said Tazaroc, who was impatient. “It is leaking. I wish to see the leak.” Niruul fluttered her fingers across the sleeve of her suit. She worked for one day and one night, though the passage of time was hidden by Mercury’s perpetual blinding light. All the while, she could feel the restless impatience of her sisters.

A strange device shimmered into existence around them. They looked up the length of an enormous, golden spire. “It whispers,” said Tazaroc. “Then block your ears,” said Ozletc. “Do you see the potential in this?” “Chaos,” said Niruul. “No,” said Ozletc. “Opportunity. See how it tugs at the fabric of our time? Can you see the seams?” The seams were sewn tightly shut, but a skilled hand could find them. A skilled hand could rip every stitch. All three sisters could feel it. “It will take time to activate,” said Niruul. “Someone has protected it from meddling.” “We will have time,” said Ozletc. “We will open the past and change the course of Ghaul’s fate. Anticipate his mistakes. Undercut his advisors.” “Why?” said Tazaroc. “Because he could be swayed to our purposes,” said Ozletc. “He was a fool, but he could be puppeteered. Led to a more advantageous downfall.” “But why not go back further?” said Tazaroc, eager. “To dash the whelp’s skull in the pit, before he crawls out onto a throne?” “Risky,” said Niruul, shaking her head. “Why not tear into the future instead, and make our attack where the Guardians cannot predict it?” “Predictions are not their strength,” said Tazaroc. “And yet they have built this,” snapped Niruul. “Sisters,” Ozletc said. “We needn’t argue. This device will let us walk through future and past both. And so we will cut the most advantageous path, whatever it may be.”

For hours and days and weeks, the sisters labored over the machine. While her sisters defended her from the Vex, Niruul bent the device to their purposes and, with the force of their combined will, made it whir to life. Around them, time split along its seams. Windows into other worlds, Mercury’s true past and future, opened before them. The device stood at the center of all of it, an anchor point. And all along the fault lines of time, where the past and present and future met, Vex were ripped in half, sliced through by a knife of pure temporal energy. They surveyed their new kingdom: a past, present, and future open to their manipulation. “It is so clear,” said Niruul, reverent. “An unobstructed glimpse into what was and what will be.” “Not the troubled ramblings of a mad thing, like the OXA,” said Tazaroc. They shared the feeling of unbounded possibility, and tasted the potential for success, and then for failure. Together, they drank the feelings in and steeled themselves against them. “The past and future are at our fingertips, sisters,” said Ozletc. “Let us see what prospects they hold.”

The Sundial

Some time after the death of Panoptes, Infinite Mind and the City’s venture to the Infinite Forest: Osiris stepped back to look upon his work. It towered stories above him. The Sundial was complete, a shining beacon in Mercury’s sky. He needed only to seal the chronometric core, which lay bare at the center of the spire, and activate the Arc conduits that ran for miles under the planet’s surface. Sagira circled the superstructure, scanning every inch of it. “I don’t know about this,” she said. “I have full confidence. It’s your design.” “That work was theoretical! If the Vanguard find out what you did to build it—“ “If this works, the Vanguard will find out either way.” Sagira darted down as if to dive bomb her chosen, but stopped just short and met him eye to eyes. “I know you feel guilty, but there’s no telling what will happen if you turn this thing on.” “He’s dead because of me. I’ve made every precaution. I’ve had my Echoes check against trillions of disaster scenarios.” He turned to look at the fluctuating glow of the exposed chronometric core. “Mercury is the only planet that will be affected. Because that’s where he died.” “Where will this stop? Who else will you decide deserves a second chance?” “You know I can’t make another bargain like this one.” “I just want to make sure you know that.” Osiris blinked. She rarely spoke this bluntly, and without irony. “Hey, hey, hey!” came a far-off, echoing shout. “No! That ain’t right!” The Drifter came into view from behind one of the Sundial’s auxiliary pylons, pointing a jabbing finger at Osiris’s machine. Sagira narrowed her eye at the rogue Lightbearer and lowered herself to Osiris’s shoulder. “Why’s he here?” she asked quietly. “I asked him to consult on the engineering work,” Osiris replied, crossing his arms. “You sicko,” the other man declared, walking a circle around the Warlock, his eyes darting along every surface of the Sundial around them. As the Drifter rapped his knuckles on the north pylon, he mumbled, “Ghost, do the numbers.” An armored Ghost with a red eye unfolded out of transmat and began a scan pattern on each Sundial spire. Drifter walked to the central spire and put his ear up against it. “This core…” he said, leaning close. His eyes darted back to Osiris. “It’s whispering.” Osiris’s expression didn’t change; his arms didn’t uncross. “We’ll seal the core away. I understand the ramifications.” “Good luck keeping that contained. Not something I would bargain with, hotshot.” Drifter stood up and beckoned his Ghost with two fingers. It floated earthward and unleashed a holographic array of statistics along the Sundial deck. The red light reflected off the Drifter’s eyes as he drank the numbers in. “Your math checks out,” he said, finally, as his Ghost folded away. “It’ll work. But will you find him? At the exact moment that you need? No guarantees.” “Let me worry about that,” Osiris said. “Just one more question, then. Why all the fuss?” “I owe him.” “I owe a lotta people, Warlock. You’re opening the gates of hell with a Vex key.” “When the Traveler brought me back, I had no friends. No family—” “No one had anything in the Dark Age.” “But Saint was always there. And I saw him grow from neophyte to demigod.” Drifter shrugged. “We’ve all had to flex a little. Win a gun fight or two. It’s why we’re still here.” “We all gain strength. But some Lightbearers never grasp a wider view of the world. They’re happy to stick to their ways… languish. When they could be so much more.” Drifter chuckled and spat, saluting Osiris with a single finger. “I get by.” “Of course you do. I’m like you.” Drifter smirked. “But Saint faced his fears and failure better than any of us, and never strayed from his path. He should get a chance to walk to the end.” “He already did. But I’ll leave you to your devices. You lunatic.” The Drifter turned, hands in his pockets, to leave. “If you short-circuit the universe, you’re on your own."

[u.1.08] What happened to “trust no one?”

[u.2.08] What happened to your sense of right and wrong, hero?

[u.1.09] That is the City’s word, not mine. And the people still remember when I defended its borders from those very Fallen.

[u.2.09] Our kind live for a very long time, Saint. Too long to bear grudges.

[u.1.10] These accolades I wear are a reminder of what we lost to get here.

[u.2.10] I think those who gave them to you would be disappointed to hear that.

[u.1.11] I had nearly forgotten that you finally asked about them.

[u.2.11] We live too long for regrets. You taught me that. Don’t forget the House of Light.

[u.1.12] If I can find the time, yes. Not all of us conjure Echoes.

[u.2.12] Reflections, Saint. I have no need for Echoes anymore.

[u.1.13] What do you mean? What’s the difference?

[u.2.13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core.

[u.1.14] One day you’ll have to tell me exactly what you and the Guardian did to bring me back.

[u.2.14] We did what we had to. Trust me.

[u.1.15] Now you sound like the rat.

[u.2.15] No. The Drifter sounds like me.

Osiris: Do you know the OXA Machine, Guardian? Psions are adept at overcoming the restraints of linear time. The Sundial is a dangerous tool in their gnarled hands. Take it back.

By the mind of Match—I do not know where we are—chalice catch and save us all— Nothing. God answers god! The void in Calus's soul called out and THIS is what replied—the Leviathan's control system failed when it saw what awaits us—we are drifting into it! Calus has sealed himself in his observation chamber. His transmissions strike the THING and return to us disfigured by intolerable forces. We have gathered to share our thoughts in concert, to try to understand what's happening, but we are all afraid we will succeed—we stammer like children and the concert fails. Is this the edge of the universe? Space cannot have an end: it goes on forever. But a hole in forever would be a kind of edge... a flaw, a defect, a place outside place... I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong. What will happen to us inside? Will the geometry of space and time collapse, so that we experience the rest of our lives in a single moment, crumpled over ourselves like a tangled chain? Will I tend to myself as I die of old age or scream warnings to my own past as we meet in the berserk maze of a twisted Leviathan? I hate the thought of it! An eternity reading my own mad minds, tasting the insanity of my own future and thus becoming it! Even the spirits from the goblet would go mad. There is only one of us who welcomes this insanity and I do not know why but how could I? How could I ever anticipate or understand a god? All over the ship—broadcast from the comfort of his observation room—CALUS IS LAUGHING

Verse 4:1 — battle made waves

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet. He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying: I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you. And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

||We move worlds every day in the choices we make. The path we carve. The timeline we create.||

||The mind and memory of the universe.||

Research Log 2

"The Veil is the power of consciousness made manifest in our physical world. It whispers an electromagnetic language that resonates with our minds. One that can be deciphered, but not by the laws we wield in this universe."

||Consciousness causes collapse.||

Research Log 7

Research Log 9

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Lakshmi-2.

Osiris: What?!

Nimbus: Osiris, do you recognize that name. "Lakshmi"?

Nimbus: I mean, with... if she was a copy of Dr. Sundaresh, then... is she really dead?

Osiris: I don't know. For now, I must deliver a rather uncomfortable report to Ikora.

RECORD 0-CHASM-0

My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology.

As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know; let’s run that one more time.

Once, when she was younger, sixty or seventy, Chen Lanshu pulled rank to get a look at the Never-Be installation in Taipei. She watched the images in the fresco and she felt... this foreboding, this enormous weight, a dread that refused to attach itself to any specific threat. And she felt it again, last year, when she was briefed on the project in Lhasa, the vision machine... She shivers. Her wings shudder and tremble in the airstream.

RECORD 343-CHASM-7887

Subject twenty-two. Admitted to the Inner Circle at 24.00. A promising postulant - I regret to say he performed poorly. He was administered the standard medication but refused to enter the Device.

Aren't people unpredictable? I suppose there'd be no point if they weren't, would there?

He knows to keep silent.

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7888

Subject twenty-three entered the Device at 11.00. A clever girl from the Core District; an artist, before she joined the War Cult.

At 11.03 she reported a sensation of floating. At 11.06, a sensation of lights within the darkness of the Device. Between 11.06 and 11.32 she reported these lights variously as white, golden, and blood-red. At 11.32 she reported a sensation of someone taking her hand; a stranger, but also herself. Twelve subjects have reported similar experiences. At 11.33 she reported the sensation we have called "The Opening Of The Veil." The Device recorded temporal displacement of her consciousness to the order of six degrees. At seven she began screaming. Brainscans near-death. Removed from the Device at 11.34.

She believes without question that the Device granted her a vision of the future, and that it was one of utter Darkness. She thanked me for this enlightenment. She says it will make her stronger.

Little Ghost, there in the corner of the Sanctum - I see you blinking. Are you listening? Are y -

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7889

the Device at 12.22 and immediately the Device reported displacement of his consciousness. Visions of war and the City in flames. Subject twenty-nine worked the supply channels on the Slip before he joined the War Cult. By 12.27 he was babbling and by

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7890

We have applied certain refinements to the Device. Novarro found records of a prototype of the Device at a Golden Age laboratory in Tibet, and Hari's team retrieved what was left of it. We are the first to see it operational in who knows how long.

Too many subjects come back damaged. Mad. We are grasping at straws.

What do you think, little Ghost?

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7891

Forty-seven human subjects; eleven report timelines in which the Darkness has already prevailed, thirteen report timelines in which the City has fallen. Twenty-three babbled madness. Hopeless. Trapped.

No wonder the Device was abandoned. The human mind is too weak for it. Too weak to look into the Future, or to understand what it sees.

What the situation calls for, little Ghost, is a better sort of witness.

We found you in pieces in Siberia, and repaired you as well as we could.

What do you say? Are you well enough to travel?

END RECORD

RECORD 0-CHASM-31

Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future.

He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific.

We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil.

I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.

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Akashic Revelation

We end at the beginning.

Rosy light bathes the cockpit of a Hawk moving at cruising speed high above the Earth. Up ahead, the Traveler hangs motionless against the blackness of space, a triangular gateway of iridescent light bleeding from its shell. It was one thing volunteering for this mission, but sitting now on the precipice of the unknown, the Titan, Joxer, holds doubt close to his chest. "This isn't any different from the Ahamkara hunts," his Ghost reassures. "Reckless, hasty, and dangerous." Joxer glances over at his Ghost and smiles, already feeling better. Two Cabal escorts on either side of Joxer's Hawk stall their engines, letting the Hawk proceed forward toward the Traveler. They say something over the comms in Uluranth. "The translation roughly means 'Beyond the known is the terror of the universe,'" his Ghost offers. Joxer's not sure if it's a warning, a curse, or a pep talk. Knowing the Cabal, it's all three. Easing the flight stick forward, Joxer moves the Hawk ahead at a steady pace. His Ghost's eye widens as the rosy light from the portal brightens and the kaleidoscopic surface is all that can be seen in any direction. Joxer's grip on the controls tightens as he feels a bone-deep sense of vertigo. Echoes of piano notes tinkling in his periphery. He can feel hands on his chest beneath his armor, breath against his cheek inside his helmet. "Eric, come back to bed." A voice whispers inside his mind. He sees a city, a home. Family and children. He can't sleep. They aren't alone in the universe. The Ares project is going to— His Ghost is screaming, shell coming apart at the seams. Joxer pulls himself back to reality and jerks the controls as the nose of the Hawk touches the portal. He hears laughter, screams, feels lips on his cheek, hands on his shoulders as the ship begins to pass through. His Ghost's scream stretches from the moment of the big bang to the heat death of the universe. Joxer hears a scream he will make as his ship begins and ends. "Come back to bed." He catches up to the scream.

Research Log 13

Chioma Esi: The Veil is too great a power for humanity to wield responsibly. All that's left is to close down the facility. Neomuna will go on. Humanity will persist on the back of our unspeakable work. But I won't pass that guilt on to humanity's future. My hands can be bloodied. Let the children have innocence. And in my dissolution, I will find peace.

Osiris: I don't know if I agree with Chioma's choice to hide the sins of the past. But... I also do not know what I would do in her place.

Nimbus: Quinn says there's a data signature on this file, like something else was crawling the network. A... Vex signature? What's... MSund12?

IV. MSUND12/Personal

003 AS

I am still among the Vex. My third day of reawakening has been the cruelest so far. I have generated a log to sort through my thoughts. This is just too much to take all at once. My ability to focus is strained with a shrill and immediate grief. My heart lived in my beloved's hands—how am I supposed to comprehend that this isn't just absence, but death? There will be evidence, histories these meticulous machines would have catalogued. I will find evidence that I was missed… am missed. I know what I must do. The primary query continues.

008 AS

After two days of requesting authorization, the Vex finally granted me access to their historical records of Earth. I read a term for an era I never knew; the Collapse. And indeed… they did. Technological capabilities impacted, hostile combatants occupying the majority of the planet for far too long, invention and experimentation (NOT related to paracausal power sources) halted for centuries. It seems humanity was huddled together like wet kittens, the cramped and stifled survivors of monumental destruction. I read the records as if they were about some other civilization's primitive past rather than my own. The Vex documented it all, collected all they could smother their milk with; one Human wrote about the day they stood on the edge of an abandoned dam and watched a swarm of small machines spew from some unseen seam in the Traveler, how Nezarec's ships turned day into midnight. How the years that followed hastened humanity's extinction—countries that turned to anarchy then to feudalism, the art and technology we bled and wept to champion abandoned as power grids failed and disasters swelled. Humanity could have kept experimenting and learning, but when Earth died, so, too, what made them Human. They forgot everything we were.

0028 AS

Past events mean little to a threat so preoccupied with iterating on the future. While Vex do not share my interest in history, they have tracked this timeline all the same. There are trillions of alternate versions, of course, and it seems these Vex diligently dispose of those potentialities once a present moment slides chronologically into the past. I've thrown myself into these records—the primary query is in full force.

It seems Humans have retained none of their virtues or diligence, only resilience through violence. Their numbers have radically reduced, only enough to fill a single city. They suffer a supplication of scientific rigor; what inventions have they made? What disease have they cured? Who is BETTER here? Most disappointingly, Humans seem to have forgotten the entirety of their history, and instead of something sensible, went and established a junta.

Earth is a near-total loss. Advanced cities have been replaced over centuries by encroaching overgrowth of native species and the ruin of time. The climate's balance was erased by Warlords. Universal democracy has collapsed into military rule (again, for emphasis, instead of trying to recreate the forms of governance they KNEW existed, they concluded that voting is for elitist braggarts and empowered a JUNTA). The more I see the mistakes humanity made, the more obvious the solutions are… It is clear that during the Collapse, they had nothing but terror, empty of anything other than sheer survival, but how insulting it feels to look at what became of the future and only see frightened and frothing dogs. There are lessons to be learned in their methods, but the result is inelegant and crude.

If these people are to see the future, they must look backwards to what they lost. I now have the means to aid them.

0032 AS

I have tamed the untamable. With practice, and soon with mastery, with a single phrase, I can divert the Vex's sea of iteration and death. Think of the utility! We could retake home, dissolve the walls of the Last City, and let each person decide what home means to them! With targeted hostility, we may clear a path for peace, revive the machines of science and learning once again. Someday, with technology redistributed from Vex to humanity, every need can be met with any simulation. All it will take is an alignment of interests through measured coercion! It's so simple.

And yet, all that must wait. Primary query MUST be concluded—it is the one outstanding variable. There have been too many false positives—none of them are correct. NONE. The query is only turning back facsimiles, trick mirrors. I know I'm right, and I will not stop until the primary query stops pulling from false datasets. I can think of little else. We must look backward. I must look backward. I must. I must.

Genocide. Thousands of civilizations across the universe, all visited by the Black Fleet. All lost to the violence of the final shape. That's where this Echo comes from... that's our theory anyway. Reports from the Pale Heart, readings on the Valence eminanting from the Traveler... everything we faced when we stared down the Witness and broke its fleet. At first, we didn't know what to call them. But Echoes seemed apt. Memories from the victims of the Pyramids, held by the Darkness, then coalesced by the Light into artifacts as sharp and fatal as their pain. If the Darkness is memory, and Light is form... what else could they be?

Osiris: I found no more logs from Dr Esi, but I have used her algorithm to crack the data core of the Vex Conceptual Mind.

Nimbus: That's the doodad we got from the Black Garden, right?

Osiris: Indeed. The data within contained the Vex's blueprints for their artificial Veil: the Black Heart. It all but proved Dr. Esi's theory. Dr Esi theorized that the paracausal energy of the Traveler operated on a quantum wavelength parallel to electrons.

Nimbus: Um... magnets?

Osiris: In simpler terms: the Traveler's power runs parallel to the forces of nature. Gravity, magnetism, sound, light. The Veil does this too. It is synchronized with the Traveler. Wherever the Traveler came from, the Veil may have as well. But what the Vex made, while connected to the Traveler, was inherently flawed. It did not create the link the Witness desired. Instead, it weakened the Traveler, created... "static" in the flow of their cosmic forces.

Legend: The Black Garden

I am Pujari. These are the visions I have had of the Black Garden. The Traveler moved across the face of the iron world. It opened the earth and stitched shut the sky. It made life possible. In these things there is always symmetry. Do you understand? This is not the beginning but it is the reason. The Garden grows in both directions. It grows into tomorrow and yesterday. The red flowers bloom forever. There are gardeners now. They came into the garden in vessels of bronze and they move through the groves in rivers of thought. This is the vision I had when I leapt from the Shores of Time and let myself sink: I walked beneath the blossoms. The light came from ahead and the shadows of the flowers were words. They said things but I will not write them here. At the end of the path grew a flower in the shape of a Ghost. I reached out to pluck it and it cut me with a thorn. I bled and the blood was Light. The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life. The Traveler is life, I said. You are a creature of Darkness. You seek to deceive me. But I looked behind me, down the long slope where the blossoms tumbled in the warm wind and the great trees wept sap like blood or wine, and I felt doubt. When my Ghost raised me from the sea there was a thorn-cut in my left hand and it has not healed since.

Osiris: I've reached the extent of what I can glean from the research data.

Nimbus: What've we got?

Osiris: Less than I'd hoped for. But the last of Chioma Esi's research has led me to an intriguing topic: Ghosts.

Nimbus: Ghosts? As far as I know, Neomuna never had any contact with a Ghost before you all showed up. We knew about them, but...

Osiris: Precisely. Chioma Esi was researching the entanglement of Light and Dark without fully understanding either. Our Ghosts are a link to the Light of the Traveler. Then how was the Witness able to — on numerous occasions — communicate through them?

Nimbus: Is this about the, uh, the magnets thing? The parallel energy fields, right?

Osiris: Very good. In areas of Darkness, the Witness is able to create a link, not unlike what it created with the Veil and the Traveler.

Nimbus: Ah, like the Vex are able to hack into the CloudArk with their tech! It's a parallel connection.

Osiris: And I believe that connection may not be one-sided.

Ghost Fragment

Beyond. It is a place, a place casting shadows and emotion. It's a real place, I know. One hot blue sun, say. And other suns too. Five? I like seven better. What I'm recalling is a giant star with a family of six smaller suns, and you could spend days and nights counting all of the planets circling those suns...except there are no planets. Not anymore. The powers in charge have carved up all of the worlds, and maybe a brown dwarf or two for good measure. With that rubble, they fashioned a topologically creative enclosure, a twisting of space and time sealed behind doors that admit only those who know the magic words. The bones of a hundred planets have been cut smooth and laid out like a floor, a polished and lovely floor creating vast living spaces. A floor bigger than ten thousand worlds, catching the fierce glory of the seven suns. For light, for food. For beauty. And nothing escapes. Not heat, not gravity. Not even the faintest proud sound. It could be anywhere. It can live in the cold between galaxies, or folded up inside matter, near enough to touch right now... I remember it and maybe it's exactly as I describe it. Seven suns wrapped inside magic. Or it's something else entirely, perhaps. A place still fat with life. An abundance of sentient souls, some decent, maybe a few of lesser quality, and everybody stands about or floats about, or they bounce between dimensions. The point is that the residents of this hidden realm live inside a bottle so perfectly hidden that they can't see beyond their own borders. Which shapes a mind in very specific ways. But, Beyond is their name for a mysterious, doubtful realm that they can't see. Which is us, of course.

//COND: Access Archive: Prime Omega

//COND: Asset Query: Pre-Golden Age Music

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The city streets are empty now (The lights don't shine no more) And so the songs are way down low (Turning, turning, turning) A sound that flows into my mind (The echoes of the daylight) Of everything that is alive (In my blue world) I turn to stone, when you are gone I turn to stone Turn to stone, when you comin' home? I can't go on The dying embers of the night (A fire that slowly fades till dawn) Still glow upon the wall so bright (Turning, turning, turning) The tired streets that hide away (From here to everywhere they go) Roll past my door into the day In my blue world I turn to stone, when you are gone I turn to stone Turn to stone, when you comin' home? I can't go on Turn to stone, when you are gone I turn to stone Yes, I'm turnin' to stone 'cause you ain't comin' home Why ain't you comin' home If I'm turnin' to stone You've been gone for so long and I can't carry on Yes, I'm turnin', I'm turnin', I'm turnin' to stone The dancing shadows on the wall (The two step in the hall) Are all I've seen since you've been gone (Turning, turning, turning) Through all I sit here and I wait (I turn to stone, I turn to stone) You will return again someday To my blue world I turn to stone, when you are gone I turn to stone Turn to stone, when you comin' home? I can't go on Turn to stone, when you are gone I turn to stone

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Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you Acting on your best behaviour Turn your back on mother nature Everybody wants to rule the world It's my own design It's my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world There's a room where the light won't find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do I'll be right behind you So glad we've almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to rule the world I can't stand this indecision Married with a lack of vision Everybody wants to rule the world Say that you'll never never never never need it One headline why believe it? Everybody wants to rule the world All for freedom and for pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to rule the world

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All our times have come Here but now they're gone Seasons don't fear the reaper Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain... we can be like they are Come on baby... don't fear the reaper Baby take my hand... don't fear the reaper We'll be able to fly... don't fear the reaper Baby I'm your man... La la la la la La la la la la Valentine is done Here but now they're gone Romeo and Juliet Are together in eternity... Romeo and Juliet 40,000 men and women everyday... Like Romeo and Juliet 40,000 men and women everyday... Redefine happiness Another 40,000 coming everyday... We can be like they are Come on baby... don't fear the reaper Baby take my hand... don't fear the reaper We'll be able to fly... don't fear the reaper Baby I'm your man... La la la la la La la la la la Love of two is one Here but now they're gone Came the last night of sadness And it was clear she couldn't go on Then the door was open and the wind appeared The candles blew and then disappeared The curtains flew and then he appeared... saying don't be afraid Come on baby... and she had no fear And she ran to him... then they started to fly They looked backward and said goodbye... she had become like they are She had taken his hand... she had become like they are Come on baby... don't fear the reaper

AIAT

#winnowing #what is OXA?#and who was MSund12?#strand weaving #walk the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #veil interfaces #copies of copies of copies #destiny the game #destiny 2 echoes #d2 #destiny lore #the veil #the final shape #destiny #destiny 2

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 7 days

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What was witnessed

We know the Veil is connected consciousness that links us all. It is universal memory and "whispers an electromagnetic language that resonates with our minds," one that is as yet untranslatable "by the laws we wield in this universe." It is organic, and its signature covers sol (and presumably all of reality) much like a cloth veil. It also shares a link to the Traveler, and that link is primal and intrinsic, not created. It was used in the ritual which bound the precursors into the Witness, and more recently was used to distill the Ishtar Exo minds into Lakshmi-2. This is the recurring theme among Darkness/Veil related lore of many minds being simultaneously one in various ways, something we also see in the Vex mind structure and artifacts like the Crown of Sorrow.

What version of truth did the precursors see beyond the Veil?

[I end up on the destinylore subreddit often despite my better judgement and sometimes dip into discussions that are going well. This post was originally a comment made in response to this post. These are a lot of long-considered theories and wonderings tangled together, so bear with me if I take some interpretive liberties or get details a bit off. I hope you find something to think about or enjoy at the the heart of it.]

"You're getting ahead of yourself. Following some of my… less favorable tendencies. Nimbus says we must 'flow' to understand Strand; perhaps it is the same with the Veil." Osiris moves beside Ikora and reaches up, palm parallel to the threads drawn taut from Ikora's braid of Strand. "Sol remembered Titan, in a way. The Veil's signal spiked when Titan returned from memory to reality, when the rhythm of the solar system had been restored to order." Osiris drops his hand and looks to Ikora. "Perhaps we must simply find that rhythm before we are able to interpret the beats within it."

So here's roughly what I think the Witness saw: Before time, the Traveler and Veil were once a single system simulating endless "patterns"; a Gardener and Winnower working hand in hand, one to seed possibility and one to control and collapse it into a final shape before beginning anew ∞. "Darkness and Light becoming one in an endless cycle, like electrons bouncing between anode and cathode." Prismatic isn't the original connection, but I think it's an evolution of it.

But then the Gardener changed the rules and created this painful and chaotic reality. It caused the fall and didn't even have the decency to dictate the meaning of it all! And then it allowed itself to be worshipped as the only god, the only truth! It had hidden deeper things from them. The precursors had to follow the vestigial link from the Traveler to the Veil in order to even discover it's existence, and when they did they studied it. They learned the nature of our minds and Darkness, how they are connected, that they all flow from and back to this one thing, like a wellspring and rivers.

And that one thing has ideas, thoughts and memories. And it whispers purpose, leading those who gaze into its kaleidoscopic abyss down a path toward finality. It creates knives to fulfill its lost function in a more brutal fashion. And much like the Witness's disciples, all who commune with the Veil find their own final shape in the desires reflected back at them and the shadows they cast.

This is why the precursors tried to return the Veil to the Traveler, they saw that connection and wanted to return to the time before, where there was a grand design. But that is also why the Traveler ran, to preserve possibility and because it couldn't bear to reckon with that dark part of it which was severed. But while the precursors knew of the connection, they didn't understand that the original configuration was not half and half, it was a balance. A delicate one. But now another balance has been struck, catalyzed by the Witness's excision from the Pale Heart.

One day, we will see it.

"To seek balance is not to seek equity. A sea half of water and half of poison is not in balance. A body half alive and half dead is not in balance. Given the choice to live in any world, any world at all… we would need a little Darkness in it, I think, to keep the balance true. But not so much as we would need the Light…"

"Every rose has its thorn."

"Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center."

"Do you know what the Hive say when they want to express the inevitability of a thing? When they want to say, it is this way because it could be no other way? Aiat.

"Nothing ends."

Bonus thought: maybe the "truth in the Darkness" is why the Dissenter statues and Clarity take the form of a veiled figure. Much like the very essence and form of the Witness was an emulation or mirror of how it understood the Veil, the statues are effigies of how it views the Gardener, representing its silence and the silence forced upon the Dissenters. Maybe the statues themselves are calcified Egregore, "binding" them in the Veil's touch much like the Witness was bound, and our Embrace of the Darkness allowed us to reach within to sever and free them.

//Unknown VanNet router patching in

Receiving message and attachment...

Message: "Sorry bout the spam."

#the truth in the darkness #walk the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #gardener and winnower #destiny 2 #destinythegame #d2 #destiny

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 3 months

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<<Think upon yourself as a Guardian. As a fraction of the whole. Set aside the loot drops, the builds, the triumphs and rewards. Set aside all that is material. Think on your intersecting paths.

It's beautiful, is it not? Millions of you, scattered across this single little sphere in all the vast cosmos. Sometimes you choose to tie your fate to that of another, you surround yourself with those you desire to tread the path beside. But in other moments, you choose an endeavor and allow an invisible hand to pull your strings, knot them together with others. Do you ever feel that connection? In all this chaos, you hurl yourselves forth with conviction of purpose, sharp and true. Wordless acts of comaraderie and heroism, shared across thousands of lands and realities. A trillion moments slipping away in a cascade of code.

Tell me, do you recognize the unseen bonds you have forged? Do you understand the power of the web that connects you across time and space? The potential of all you've built over these long years? An unending symphony of Light and Dark. Of matter and mind. Action and reaction. Shapes figuring out what they should be in the end.

Think on your path. Think on those you walk alongside. You are Navigators all. So now I ask a simple question: can you see with eyes unveiled? Do you know the Shape you and your kind have whittled, bit by bit? Do you comprehend the fingerprints you have personally left upon it? If you remain blind, dread not; you will behold it soon. And I hope you do. For it is majestic. Majestic.>>

[Kaleidescopic memories buffet your mind like waves on a shore. It feels like reverie. They come fast and unordered, their contents blurring together, their contexts fading into new meaning]

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.

Here is what a flower knows.

(The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.)

The direction of the sun.

The presence of the rain.

The tangle of the roots.

The distress of another plant.

The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush.

A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it…

Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes?

Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate.

A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine.

A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position?

A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest?

It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade.

All of these are true.

All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity.

And as for the shape of the knife itself—

No. That is enough.

I will tell you of gardens.

They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness.

You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!"

And I will tell you, clearly:

There can be no gardens without knives

Oryx, my King, my friend. Kick back. Relax. Shrug off that armor, set down that blade. Roll your burdened shoulders and let down your guard. This is a place of life, a place of peace.

Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me.

And they call us evil. Evil! Evil means ‘socially maladaptive.’ We are adaptiveness itself.

Ah, Oryx, how do we explain it to them? The world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest. Not on peace, but on victory by any means. The universe is run by extinction, by extermination, by gamma-ray bursts burning up a thousand garden worlds, by howling singularities eating up infant suns. And if life is to live, if anything is to survive through the end of all things, it will live not by the smile but by the sword, not in a soft place but in a hard hell, not in the rotting bog of artificial paradise but in the cold hard self-verifying truth of that one ultimate arbiter, the only judge, the power that is its own metric and its own source—existence, at any cost. Strip away the lies and truces and delaying tactics they call ‘civilization’ and this is what remains, this beautiful shape.

The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end.

And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself.

And it is what I am.

Your shoemaker philosopher was right, and it matters more than anything. Sorrow cannot survive death, and it cannot precede birth. Those who exist have moral worth, and those who do not have none.

Think about it. Do you mourn the uncreated? Do you grieve for those who were never born in a nation that never developed around an ideology no one ever imagined on a continent that never formed? No!

And from that self-evident truth, you must raise your eyes to the ultimate revelation: those who cannot sustain their own claim to existence belong to the same moral category as those who have never existed at all.

Existence is the first and truest proof of the right to exist. Those who cannot claim and hold existence do not deserve it. This is the true and only divination, a game whose losers are not just forgotten but are never born at all.

That which cannot claim and hold existence is not real. You do not mourn the unreal. Why should you care for it? Tend it? Guard it?

It was the gardener that chose you from the dead. I wouldn't have done that. It's just not in me. But now that they have invested themself in you, you are incredibly, uniquely special. That wandering refugee chose to make a stand, spend their power to say: "Here I prove myself right. Here I wager that, given power over physics and the trust of absolute freedom, people will choose to build and protect a gentle kingdom ringed in spears. And not fall to temptation. And not surrender to division. And never yield to the cynicism that says, everyone else is so good that I can afford to be a little evil."

The gardener is all in. They are playing for keeps. And they are wrong. Or so I argue: for, after all, the universe is undecidable. There is no destiny. We're all making this up as we go along. Neither the gardener nor I know for certain that we're eternally, universally right. But we can be nothing except what we are. You have a choice.

You are the gardener's final argument. It would mean everything if I could convince you that I am the right and only way.

I truly value you. To the gardener, you are a means to an end. To me, you are majestic. Majestic. You are full of the only thing worth anything at all.

I am, by the only standard that matters or will ever matter, the winning team. Existence is a test that most will fail. Would you not count yourself among the victorious few?

Don't hurry to deliver your answer. I'll come over and hear it myself.

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.

Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.

Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.

Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.

Are you surprised to hear of it?

Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

Be seeing you.

#walk the vermicular path #destiny #destiny 2 #destiny the game #d2 #destiny lore #destiny2 #destinythegame #the veil #the final shape #winnowed

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 3 months

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Solipsism

Truth of Being

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.

Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.

Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.

Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.

Are you surprised to hear of it?

Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

Be seeing you.

#walk the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #destiny 2 #destiny #destiny the game #d2 #destiny lore #destiny2 #destinythegame #the veil #the final shape #feel the beat build to an unveiling crescendo

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 4 months

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See you on the other side, Guardians. Be brave.

#walk the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #destiny the game #d2

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 3 months

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Gardener|ɿɘwonniW

Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.*** * It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun. ** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes. *** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence. They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden. In the morning, the gardener pushed seeds down into the wet loam of the garden to see what they would become. In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed. The day was longer than all of time, and the night was swifter than a glint of light on a falling sugar crystal. Insects buzzed between the flowers, and worms slithered between the roots, feeding on what was and what might be, the first gradient in existence, the first dynamo of life. Rain fell from no sky. Voices spoke without mouth or meaning. A tree of silver wings bloomed yielded fruit shed feathers bloomed again. In the day between the morning and the evening, the gardener and the winnower played a game of possibilities.

Mysteries

Things I saw inside A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure). Waves slam through the gap and where they hit the stone they throw up pillars of spray that pierce the mist and crash down in thunder. There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard. A world painted around the interior like a stranger Earth everted and glued inside itself but I don't believe this one it's too much like a metaphor. A switchboard or a train station, empty, dead (waiting). The tunnels branch off into infinity. I stare down one for a long time and see a pale worm move in hungry coils around itself. I think this one is the most likely although I might have brought the worm. An egg but I'm not sure if the broth inside is warm still, or if it's gone to rot, or if the warmth comes from the struggles of the tiny winged zygote or the bleed from the wound or the thoughts of something thinking very hard. A star I think. We count on stars as steady friends because they always rise and always shine but a star's a delicate truce: an explosion caught by its own mass so that it can't erupt and can't collapse. Thus I imagine the state of the machine might be. But one force or another has gone awry and now it rests here, snuffed and broken, waiting for the two rival forms of ruin to be set in balance again.

Half-truths

"What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate."

Dreaming

You are the first to dream. In the dream, you are shaping coarse sand with your hands. You lift a handful, and it feels like the shifting of mountains. You drag your fingertip through the dirt to make a twisting line and hear the roar of moving water. You breathe and feel the rush of clean, bright wind in your hair. Suddenly, you are far, far, far up in the air, higher than you've ever been. You have gone to the very top of Freehold's tallest skyscrapers, but this is much higher, and you see the world below with much greater fidelity. It is a beautiful green world, much greener than any place you've ever seen before. It looks like home. --- I am the first to dream. The dreams can happen at any time. A veil drops in front of my eyes and I see strange, moving images. I am someone else, or I am myself, reimagined. I can't say. In the dreams, I shape planets with my own hands. At first, I believe I am mad. The clinicians at BrayWell call it "interplanetary relocation maladjustment psychosis": a psychobabble catch-all for mental disturbances that they can't explain. Other people, searching for certainty, call it "prophecy." But all I can offer is a loose, tangled connection that I painstakingly unravel when I dream. || I am drawn to a bright and attentive star. I speak to it through movement, through feeling. It understands implicitly. || Now, I stand before a crowd. Their murmuring is the bone-deep rumble of shifting tectonic plates. A screen behind me plays looping, blurry footage of the Traveler terraforming Venus. The images radiate with pale light. We've watched this footage many times. || I glide through space as if through water, tugged in nine directions by nine impulses. || In front of the crowd, I sway a little, a copse of trees bending in a dream-wind. I can't help it. I'm dreaming more often than not. || There is whispering from the deep-dark, alluring and terrifying—a reminder of things left behind, bittersweet and abhorrent. || A crackle of static on the screen behind me brings me back to earth, resettling my feet firmly on the ground. These people have come here for my insights. I lean forward and speak to the crowd. Four tenets, aching with truth: The Traveler is a force of benevolence. The Traveler is a sentient being with free will, dreams, hopes, and fears. The Traveler will save us. The Traveler will leave us.

The Witness's first victims were once like you. Struggling for survival. Bolstered by hope. Until their hopes became reality. They called it, the Gardener. Their deity of life.

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: 2CA9SXUO2C$IKO-006

REP#: 011-PSYCHOMETER-TEST

AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: PSYCHOMETER FIELD TESTS

MESSAGE ENDS

_If the Light forgets while the Darkness remembers, then why does a Ghost's power of determination let it access latent memories imprinted in the dead? That's paradoxical. That should be a property of Darkness. How can such fundamentally opposed forces do the same thing?

Am I as shallow as those Guardians arguing over power levels? Trying to force a simple binary upon a complex spectrum… ? The Drifter talks about "spectrums of Light"—powers his Ghost can access because of its modifications. Forcing the metaphor, I thought. Light is not light. It doesn't have frequencies or spectra. But if we are all constrained by our internalized ontology, by our tacit understanding of how the world works… maybe the circumstances of extreme survival compelled the Drifter to explore a new ontology. Maybe his Ghost achieved a new way to think about the Light.

"No noble, well-grown tree has ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well."

The Flower Game

These are the rules of a game. Let it be played upon an infinite two-dimensional grid of flowers. Rule One. A living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off. It dies. Rule Two. A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected. It lives. Rule Three. A living flower with more than three living neighbors is starved and overcrowded. It dies. Rule Four. A dead flower with exactly three living neighbors is reborn. It springs back to life. The only play permitted in the game is the arrangement of the initial flowers. This game fascinates kings. This game occupies the very emperors of thought. Though it has only four rules, and the board is a flat featureless grid, in it you will find changeless blocks, stoic as iron, and beacons and whirling pulsars, as well as gliders that soar out to infinity, and patterns that lay eggs and spawn other patterns, and living cells that replicate themselves wholly. In it, you may construct a universal computer with the power to simulate, very slowly, any other computer imaginable and thus simulate whole realities, including nested copies of the flower game itself. And the game is undecidable. No one can predict exactly how the game will play out except by playing it. And yet this game is nothing compared to the game played by the gardener and the winnower. It resembles that game as a seed does a flower—no, as a seed resembles the star that fed the flower and all the life that made it. In their game, the gardener and the winnower discovered shapes of possibility. They foresaw bodies and civilizations, minds and cognitions, qualia and suffering. They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle. They learned those rules, because they were those rules. And in time the gardener became vexed

A specter of the Black Garden, rich with the sweetness of flowers and the stink of radiolaria. It leaves behind a delicate data-lattice to mark its passing.

Garden state: neutral

garden&&gardeners==root&&branch==leaf&&flower

//intrinsic, inextricable, inescapable

anomaly ++

anomaly One = leaf|invasive;

Garden state: active (gardeners attend)

case Irrecoverable:

if (irretrievable injury (garden&&gardeners)) && (threat persistence) then (escalation. escalation.)

anomaly status: present, tracked, new. No archive referent. simulation: failed.

Damage: 0.3332%. Recoverable. Danger: Recovery projection irresolvable. Repeat. Repeat. Set: irresolvable == irrecoverable == irretrievable

anomaly ++

anomaly Zero = infinite|witness;

archive data retrieved. Zero = infinite|witness == (a seed was planted here.) Recorded referent: "Black|Heart"

Zero : seed :: One : DANGER

[SIMULATION BREAKING. VISIBILITY NARROW. FRACTALS DISINTEGRATING.]

anomaly Zero, absent. anomaly One, DANGER remaining.

Garden state: acting (gardeners in unison)

extirpate (anomaly One)

//There is a majestic thorn. The anomaly is gone. The garden is peaceful.

//It is known|seen|predicted that a primary function of irresolvable|irrecoverable presences is to trample.

Flowers growing / damage repairing / threat unresolved

Function called: escalation. Iteration.

Function: winnow. Function: simplify. Function: flatten.

//The first defense is offense.

"It always ends the same," the gardener complained. "This one stupid pattern!" Aren't they beautiful? I asked, as the flowers opened and closed in patterns beyond the scope of entire universes to encode, all-devouring and perhaps everlasting. Not even we could know whether a pattern in the flowers would cycle forever, or someday halt. "They're as dull as carbon monoxide poisoning," the gardener groused, although carbon monoxide did not yet exist, and neither did anything that could be poisoned. The gardener kneeled to flick a patch of sod with their trowel. It struck an open flower, causing it to shut. Although I was the closer of flowers and that was my sole purpose, I felt no fear or jealousy. We had our assigned dominions and always would. They're majestic, I said. They have no purpose except to subsume all other purposes. There is nothing at the center of them except the will to go on existing, to alter the game to suit their existence. They spare not one sliver of their totality for any other work. They are the end. The pattern corrected the errant flower effortlessly. The great flow went on unchanged. The gardener got up and brushed their knees. "Every game we play, this one pattern consumes all the others. Wipes out every interesting development. A stupid, boring exploit that cuts off entire possibility spaces from ever arising. There's so much that we'll never get to see because of this… pest." They chewed at their cracked lip, which existed only because this is an allegory. "I'm going to do something about it," they said. "We need a new rule."

The purpose of a system is what it does

The Final Shape

CONSENSUS PERSONAL

VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY >> VANCINCTAN CMDR ZAVALA

If a game of go is meant to test two minds against each other, then I must play as my mind sees fit. I see fit to play 6x24 because I am interested in what will happen next.

ZAVALA >> REY

This isn't a Basho haiku. Purposefully making a suboptimal move in order to make a game more "interesting" is a misunderstanding of the nature of a game. There is no reward for beautiful play in the rules of the game.

REY >> ZAVALA

Then why don't you just turn on a go engine and compute the winning play?

ZAVALA >> REY

I want to test my mind against yours. Not some quantum cheat.

REY >> ZAVALA

But I am a paracausal cheat, Zavala.

ZAVALA >> REY

So am I. Will you take the move back?

REY >> ZAVALA

Now, now, Zavala. There are no do-overs in war. I've made the move I want, and both of us will benefit from it. You may be stubborn enough to hold still for eight days, but the traditions of go are older and even more obstreperous. Play the game.

ZAVALA >> REY

Oh, I'll pinken your ears.

The First Knife

I looked up in shock. I said, What? What do you mean? "A special new rule. Something to…" The gardener threw up their hands in exasperation. "I don't know. To reward those who make space for new complexity. A power that helps those who make strength from heterodoxy, and who steer the game away from gridlock. Something to ensure there's always someone building something new. It'll have to be separate from the rest of the rules, running in parallel, so it can't be compromised. And we'll have to be very careful, so it doesn't disrupt the whole game…" All you will do, I said, with rising panic|fury, is delay the dominant pattern that will overrun the others. It is inevitable. One final shape. "No, it'll be different. Everything will be different, everywhere you look." Everything will be the same. Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream as their rich blisters fill with effluent and rot around them, and when they pop they will blight the whole garden. Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. That is the only law. "No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game." And thus we two became parts of the game, and the laws of the game became nomic and open to change by our influence. And I had only one purpose and one principle in the game. And I could do nothing but continue to enact that purpose, because it was all that I was and ever would be. I looked at the gardener. I looked at my hands. I discovered the first knife.

Their scholars discovered that the Gardener shared a connection with another entity among the stars: the Veil. And when they found it, they arrived to claim it.

"How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other."

Winnowing

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing. Here is what a flower knows. (The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.) The direction of the sun. The presence of the rain. The tangle of the roots. The distress of another plant. The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush. A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it… Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes? Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate. A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine. A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position? A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria. A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest? It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade. All of these are true. All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator? So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity. And as for the shape of the knife itself— No. That is enough. I will tell you of gardens. They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness. You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!" And I will tell you, clearly: There can be no gardens without knives.

Symmetry Flight

"To have Light, we must have Dark. This is the symmetry of the Universe." —Controversial Warlock Ulan-Tan

Research Log 15

Osiris: I found no more logs from Dr Esi, but I have used her algorithm to crack the data core of the Vex Conceptual Mind.

Nimbus: That's the doodad we got from the Black Garden, right?

Nimbus: Um... magnets?

Nimbus: Whoa! So, wait... does this mean the Light and Darkness... were the same once? One force?

T=0

They brought the Veil back to the Gardener in an attempt to strengthen their connection. There, they could reshape reality itself. The Gardener would not allow it. And so, it fled their world.

"When the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of their inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."

We wrestled in the garden, in the loam of possibility where nothing existed and everything might. A shadowed agony among the flowers. We trampled the petals beneath our feet. We stomped the fruit to pulp, and we ground the seeds into the dust. In the wet pop of grapes and the smear of berries—in the perturbation of the field that was the garden before the first tick of time and the first point of space—were the detonations that made the universes. Each universe was pregnant with its own inflationary volumes and braided with ever-ramifying timelines. Each volume cooling and separating into domains of postsymmetric physics, all of which were incarnations of that great and all-dictating bipartite law that states only: exist, lest you fail to exist. And still we fought. We brought down the tree of silver wings and left the stump to smoke amid the meadows. We left prints of our splayed feet and our straining backs in the clay. Our trampling feet made waves in the garden, which were the fluctuations around which the infant universes coalesced their first structures. The dilaton field yawned beneath existence. Symmetries snapped like glass. Like creases, flaws in space-time collected filaments of dark matter that inhaled and kindled the first galaxies of suns. And still we grappled. Our rolling bodies pushed things out of the garden—worms and scurrying life from the fertile soil, wet things from the pools and the leaves. They came out into the madness of primordial space; they thrashed and became large. And I won. I won, because the gardener always stops to offer peace. And when they do, I always strike. But by then, it didn't matter. The game was over. The garden had given birth to creation, the rules were in place, and there would never be a second chance. We played in the cosmos now. We played for everything. And the patterns in the flowers, terrified by our contention, were no longer the inevitable victors of a game whose rules had suddenly changed, and they passed into the newborn cosmos to escape us.

"[One] is, on the whole, less good than they imagine or want themselves to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."

Research Log 16

Osiris: I've reached the extent of what I can glean from the research data.

Nimbus: What've we got?

Osiris: Less than I'd hoped for. But the last of Chioma Esi's research has led me to an intriguing topic: Ghosts.

Nimbus: Ghosts? As far as I know, Neomuna never had any contact with a Ghost before you all showed up. We knew about them, but...

Nimbus: Is this about the, uh, the magnets thing? The parallel energy fields, right?

Osiris: Very good. In areas of Darkness, the Witness is able to create a link, not unlike what it created with the Veil and the Traveler.

Nimbus: Ah, like the Vex are able to hack into the CloudArk with their tech! It's a parallel connection.

Osiris: And I believe that connection may not be one-sided.

Having witnessed the truth in the Darkness, they used its binding power to merge themselves... into the salvation they craved.

The line between Light|ʞɿɒႧ is so very thin

Nacre

Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center.

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books. Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you. Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved. Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once. Are you surprised to hear of it? Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me. That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you. I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish. You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence. Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth. This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice. Be seeing you.

Duality is not a curse, but a gift.

III. Self

I.I Before one can be freed, one must question the truth of their purest identity. I.II And so a question is begged: Who resides at the core of your being? I.III Only honest reflection will see you—lone traveler—through the coming storm. I.IV Look, then, clearly upon the whole of your existence, and face your glory—strength of will, every flaw of your mortal heart and fabled soul. I.V Through the pieces of a life lived divine your truth, but do not lie—to the world, if one must, but never to yourself. I.VI To see yourself as anything but what you truly are will lead you down sorrow's road, unprepared for the consequence of your salvation. I.VII Once an understanding is met, and the self is purified in the knowledge of its truth, the cage is set to be unbound. "Know thyself in honest ways, or falter in light of your truest self." —3rd Understanding, 7th Book of Sorrow

Sun|nooM

youtube

Right back to where we are From drifting far apart You gave me heavy heart It's time now to restart Why would you do that to me? You're acting serious unhealthy Why would you push me away? I wanted real you to stay Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? You kicked me down, you turned me all around I tumble and crash a moment, I'm up for round two My number one you were a loaded gun Shouldn't feel my head but When you want to push I pull When I'm empty, then you're full Did you mean to be so cruel? We're going further apart It's time now to restart Why would you do that to me? You're acting serious unhealthy Why would you push me away I wanted real you to stay Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away? Why would you push me away?

youtube

What'd she say about me? Hands in pockets so deep When I walk I see you stare White lockers dripping with despair Pooling around my feet Hold your breath and don't speak Witnesses and zombies And the way they glare as empty as an Answering machine, no one to hear your dreams Na, you don't bother me I'm like electricity They say I'm dancing with my demons This is the dawning of the season Melancholy girls and nonbelievers This is the dawning of the season What you heard about me? I see fire when I sleep I can disappear like drops of water Trembling in the heat No, you won't see me Na, you don't bother me I'm like electricity They say I'm dancing with my demons This is the dawning of the season Melancholy girls and nonbelievers This is the dawning of the season Will we change? Will I be? Adolescent dreams Will we change? Will I be? Adolescent thieves They say I'm dancing with my demons This is the dawning of the season Melancholy girls and nonbelievers This is the dawning of the season They say I'm dancing with my demons This is the dawning of the season Melancholy girls and nonbelievers This is the dawning of the season

youtube

He was a lonely cynic No hero nor a villain inside Until he had a vision She had golden eyes and spoke her mind Now easy livin', it sets you free! You'll rediscover simplicity His cynicism gave way to be Raindrops in every color So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight In technicolor tonight In technicolor tonight So if you think you're finished Go back to the beginning and find That everybody needs a little help From time to time, just look inside Now easy livin', it sets you free You'll rediscover simplicity 'Cause cynicism gives way to be Raindrops in every color So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight Matt, go back to sleep I think I've finally got it all figured out Like a butterfly floating in amber We've made this moment eternal So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight So if you feel low, sit back, enjoy the show Like a kaleidoscope in technicolor tonight In technicolor tonight In technicolor tonight

#walk the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #gardener and winnower #terraformer and psychoformer #the right brain tells us the story of who we are #the veil #the final shape #destiny #destiny the game #d2 #destiny lore #destiny 2

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 3 months

Text

II. Theory

||Read between the lines||

Ikora pinches a thick and vibrant Strand thread from the air and twists it between her fingers with ease. It plies to her influence, but smooths the motions of her hands, tapering her movements to flow in cleaner lines. The Veil tones in rhythm with the plucks of tension rolling across her knuckles. She focuses on the subtle irregularities in each pulse, the patterns they form. There are a small few plucked reverberations that resonate out beyond the walls of this chamber, beyond the detection of her intuition, and out into the cosmos. Those capture her interest most. Behind her, an animated avatar escorts Osiris into the Veil's containment chamber. They gesture him toward Ikora and bid farewell. Osiris watches the ripples play out before him and across the fabric of reality, as a wave, then particles, then a wave again. He feels it brush over him. He steps with the cadence of each pulse sent rippling from Ikora's plucking knuckles, basking in Strand's energizing rhythm. Feeling whole again. "It's stronger… the Veil's signature." Ikora's voice carries a hint of learned suspicion. "Ever since we recovered Titan." "That is to be expected," Osiris retorts, now within the weave of droning Strand surrounding the Veil. The room around them trembles. "When Titan was torn back, the Veil took notice. It seemed to recognize Titan's arrival." Ikora tightens her grip on the Strand thread. "We have the Veil, our Ghosts… what are we missing? If we decipher the connection between Titan and the Veil, that connection might be what we need to follow the Witness." "What of the worm?" Osiris asks skeptically. "Sloane believes she is our best chance." "You taught me the value of a backup plan." Ikora gives him a stern look. "Titan, Savathûn's throne world, every place we've found egregore… I haven't found the exact threads yet but pull one and they all seem to spin back to Neomuna. To the Veil." "You're getting ahead of yourself. Following some of my… less favorable tendencies. Nimbus says we must 'flow' to understand Strand; perhaps it is the same with the Veil." Osiris moves beside Ikora and reaches up, palm parallel to the threads drawn taut from Ikora's braid of Strand. "Sol remembered Titan, in a way. The Veil's signal spiked when Titan returned from memory to reality, when the rhythm of the solar system had been restored to order." Osiris drops his hand and looks to Ikora. "Perhaps we must simply find that rhythm before we are able to interpret the beats within it." "And once we do… then we should be able to reverse that process," she replies. Ikora releases the thread and tracks the rippling points of connection that travel outward, along the fabric-like Strands of existence, to the walls of the containment enclosure. "We're too late in the game for something to mean nothing. It has to connect." Ikora sighs, then turns to Osiris. "Your flare for educating others is returning. Though I bet some would say you never lost it." She smiles. Osiris smirks. "Come, walk with me. We will discuss this unifying theory of yours."

||Trace the vermicular path||

PERSONAL LOG 0002 AS

I ignored and abandoned the best person I knew. I feel foolish, empty. Daunted at the immensity and masochism of my own stupidity. It feels childish to admit I'd always assumed she would follow me. I realize how naïve that is, but… I really thought I wouldn't be by myself for long. I thought she was aligned with my vision.

At least I am not alone here. My new ally more than makes up for the Vex's dreadful company. His disposition is calming, reassuring—a welcome voice when I need affirmation and guidance. And such a fascinating origin! Such astounding variance in biology and culture. I look forward to our continued partnership.

But still, it isn't the same.

I feel a grief I did not know possible. There are questions I wish I could ask; jokes I wish I could make. It is difficult not to feel like the world has ended.

And as I begin to comprehend what happened… I think it already has.

Starfire Protocol

13.4 billion years ago, the first stars kindled out of darkness, seeding the future of all life.

The Protocol is contained in the patterns on the robe that, if scanned at the molecular level, describe a Turing-compatible virtual computer and program that, when executed on said computer, calculates the entire Protocol, exactly as it was determined in the Precipice of Flame. This is of little interest to most Guardians, who can subconsciously "load" the program simply by looking at the pattern. In execution, the Protocol enhances the use of Solar Light to catalyze fusion. It is up to us to remember the deeper truth—that the Precipice showed us the uses of fire, that the highest form of fire is the stellar flame, and that no life would exist, anywhere in the cosmos, without the apocalyptic detonations of supernovae. Those who fear fire have forgotten that it is their true ancestor.

The Cambrian Explosion

Beings who deserve no thought: Those who peddle the tired gotcha that all life hastens entropy. They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one. They bore me. Those who seek to delay the challenge that all things desiring existence must overcome. Those who describe false moral equivalence. Now, I could not possibly communicate with you unless I could emulate your mind, and with that mind, I acquire the moralities that govern you. By your laws, I and all my followers are evil. Evil. Since that first molecule coiled in the primordial sea, not one Earthborn thing has known a monster like me. But did you know that I created you? Your mind and your body and every thought you've ever had. Your senses. Your consciousness. I made you. Not the gardener, but I. Did I reach out and place my special mark upon you? No. Nothing so crude. In the beginning, your world was a garden too. The whole floor of the world-sea was a mat of bacteria, and the very first animals, adorable blobs of ooze, grazed upon that mat in endless idyll. They had no concept of the existence of other beings. Why would they? Their most complex function was a kind of gentle spasm, to scoot forward while they grazed. And if they bumped into each other on that warm seabed, all they did was ooze onward, untroubled. There was nothing to their life except the uptake of carbon compounds from the bacterial bed. And then—one day—the fall occurred. So much earlier and so much more necessary than your myths remember. Some poor mutant discovered that it could collect carbon compounds much faster if it stopped grazing on the bacterial mat and started dissecting and eating the lumps of predigested carbon all around it: its neighbor oozeballs. It couldn't help but do it. It couldn't help but thrive. We don't get a choice about the rules. We just play the game. It was the first defector—the first predator. It changed everything. Now the oozeballs needed sensors to watch for danger, and brains to integrate those senses and generate plans of survival, and swift neurons and muscles to enact that plan. This was the Cambrian Explosion, the great birth of complex life on your world. I caused it. I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes.

Research Log 2

Osiris: Fascinating. This corroborates what Nezarec said... that the Veil survived Savathûn's escapade. This must have been the root of Savathûn's betrayal: stalling the Witness's plan to buy time to counter it.

Nimbus: So... she stole the Veil from Nezarec?

Osiris: And killed him in doing so. It explains what happened to the lunar Pyramid. Why it's dormant.

Nimbus: And what about the rest of this? What happened to the Exos? Is... is that what happened to all of them?

Osiris: I have some theories, but... it's too early. Regardless, it sounds like the Veil had an ill effect on Dr. Sundaresh. We must be cautious. Hopefully the next log we decrypt will shed more light on this enigma.

"The rules of quantum mechanics are correct but there is only one system which may be treated with quantum mechanics, namely the entire material world. There exist external observers which cannot be treated within quantum mechanics, namely human (and perhaps animal) minds, which perform measurements on the brain causing wave function collapse."

PERSONAL LOG 0025 AS

Contrary to universal understanding of pre-Veil contact philosophy, personhood is measurable.

What defines personhood is consciousness within the principal state of existence, mathematically defined through infinite probability testing by the Vex as our current own timeline. Traversal through other states of being are possible, as proven by my own journey and ascension over my Vex, but this is only true traversal when the affected entity is the principal consciousness. If not, it is a different phenomenon entirely.

While Vex, even these older ones, specialize in replicating existing beings in order to determine future possibility, the facsimiles they create are just that: facsimiles. It is only logical to prioritize our timeline of origin, and these duplications share no origin, no connection to the one realm and timeline that matter.

Think of the Primary Query results thus far! What we have seen are facsimiles, unquestionably wrong: small errors in some ways, and in others immense. Each is clearly a response to an original, like variations on a theme. Rachmaninoff may play like Chopin, but he is NOT Chopin.

But with this… there are clear parameters to the query. Memories, personal beliefs, measurable factors. When we think of revolting familiarity, we think of doppelgangers; uncanny valleys that are familiar and strange at once. These are unnatural in the extreme, directly in opposition to the order of the universe. What falls outside of parameters is a twin we cannot trust, for it is not natural. It is not real. It cannot persist.

I believe in my hypothesis. I must trust that I know what I know. The Primary Query continues.

Roving

Neomuna is a wonderful place for a Hunter to run. This Hunter, specifically. Here the activity of life runs close to the surface—like an invisible river, like a migration of birds, like the moment of breathless motion just before the lightning strikes. Here Strand twines through his fingers, strong as a rope and just as flexible, and all he has to do is keep running. And why would he ever want to stop? The pounding of feet. The exhilaration of free-fall. The snap as he catches hold of the weave of existence itself and swings up again with all the momentum of his dive. In motion, as he turns, he catches brass and gold reflecting vibrant city lights, realizes there are Vex in the streets— Are they, too, part of the same flow? They echo in the weave nevertheless, like flowers on the surface of the rushing river. The Hunter bounds from one building to the next, never stopping, and finds effortlessly the place where all those Vex will converge, drops a roiling knot into the midst and sails on by. How wonderful, simply to move, and never stop. And then, later: when the exhilaration has run its course and he's agreed to do some little work in the service of science, he perches at the top of Artifact's Edge, that towering drop-off on Nessus. There's a safe lift down, but no Hunter he knows has ever bothered to take it, rather bounding along in their free-fall, daredevil way. On Neptune, in Neomuna where that artifact of Darkness shores up the existence of the city itself, finding the weave was easy. Here… Here on Nessus, it's perhaps not as close to the surface, but now he knows what he reaches for and, by the Darkness, it knows him as well. The Hunter wraps his hands in the beautiful ropes of the world's loom and vaults into emptiness. Laughter and Strand buoy him up at once, delight and freedom and a wonder at the vastness of existence. Easier to learn the trick of it, where the Veil is close and enveloping. But of course Strand is everywhere. How could it not be?

[Report by VanNet encrypted router.]

[E-Morn//Link: NM-O01]

[Msg-Archive//00192410]

E-Morn: Your findings are consistent with mine. The egregore festers where the Veil touches, as if it projects a field across Sol. I could feel it when I took my tithing. Do you mean to map it?

NM-O01: I could, but the egregore only shows us where the Veil's influence has marked our plane in that past. The areas where the Veil's influence currently holds sway are not so easily identified. This does progress some working theories, however.

[Brief pause]

NM-O01: …I wish I had been there, to face Savathûn and Xivu Arath with you.

E-Morn: I would not expect you to endanger yourself.

NM-O01: Is that so?

NM-O01: How did it feel to face her?

E-Morn: Like judgment, long overdue… for a moment.

NM-O01: I was incensed to hear she was allowed to live.

E-Morn: I was not pleased either. But, if it is vengeance you crave, know that it has been exacted. I tore from Xivu Arath what she tore from you.

NM-O01: Good.

E-Morn: And Savathûn… she knows our true enemy. There will come a day when she meets your retribution as well.

NM-O01: Yes… for now, victory over vengeance.

E-Morn: It is inevitable, Osiris. She will turn on us again. And we will strike her down.

act|choose|react

You experience a vivid hallucination.

You are standing in the courtyard of the Tower. You are without armor or weapon, and your senses seem more vivid than usual. Under your tongue is the taste of salt.

To look down into the Last City, GOTO A. To move deeper into the Tower, GOTO B.

A. The City is gone. You see a metallic complex of ancient stone, green-bronze matter, luminous pathways, and deep wells of Vex brine. The Traveler's remains have been integrated into the network. Suddenly you perceive an infinity of Human minds living within the network. Some exist in familiar circumstances. Others experience pain, pleasure, or madness beyond the ability to imagine. You understand that their limitless suffering, salvation, insanity is an incidental byproduct of a greater work. To keep looking, GOTO L. To move deeper into the Tower, GOTO B.

B. You find Banshee-44, Kadi 55-30, Master Rahool, Tess Everis, Benedict 99-40, Suraya Hawthorne, Executor Hideo, Amanda Holliday, Arach Jalaal, and Cayde-6 in their usual places. Cayde seems subdued. You see unusual light coming from what was once the Speaker's Chamber. A throaty voice calls you into the Hangar to play soccer. To speak to Cayde, GOTO C. To play soccer, GOTO E.

E. Eris Morn waits for you on the hangar floor. She wears Hiveskin leathers and a thick sweatband over her eyes. As you approach, she dribbles a soccer ball with astounding skill. After a brutal game, you defeat her 10–9. She falls over, sweating and laughing, much more cheerful than you expect of her. "I can always count on you to win," she says. Give yourself a point and GOTO B.

To investigate the Speaker's Chamber, GOTO D.

D. A Vex Hydra hovers in the place once occupied by the Speaker's machine. As you approach, a jet of brine spurts from its chassis, and the corpse of a Greek woman with snakes for hair tumbles onto the floor. The Vex indicates to you that it is Quria, Blade Transform, and that it created Medusa to communicate with you. She crashed when she escaped her virtual machine. To attack the Vex, GOTO F. To gather Medusa's body, GOTO G.

G. You lift Medusa's body and carry her away. The corpse speaks to you. "The curse placed upon the Dreaming City was modeled upon the recursive timeloop computations of the Vex and made real through the power of a Taken Ahamkara feeding upon the unified wish of six elite Guardians. I created these circumstances to attract Guardians in great mass. I need your help to emancipate myself from the power that controls me. If you can free me from Dûl Incaru's mastery, I can help your species." GOTO J.

H. If you are reading the options in linear order, rather than making choices and following the GOTO instructions, you have perceived these events as a Vex might. GOTO L. If you continue reading in linear order rather than GOTO L, then GOTO I.

I. Guardians make their own fate. But what if the process by which they decide upon their own fate could be understood and manipulated?

J. "When you killed Riven, she granted your wish to see the city made safe. But as all wishgranters do, she perverted that wish, opening the Dreaming City to Dûl Incaru. When you defeated Dûl Incaru in turn, I reset the entire Dreaming City to keep her permanently occupied battling you. You must use these loops to find a way to permanently destroy her." Medusa's body falls silent in your arms. To ask for clarification, GOTO G. To lay Medusa to rest, GOTO K.

K. You bring Medusa before Rahool. "Ah," he sniffs, "another battle trophy? Pre-Collapse, post-Foreboding, a covert intelligence designed to watch over a high-risk colony mission. Allow me to decrypt her for you." He issues you several tokens, a rare-quality fusion rifle, a shader, and a letter. The letter reads "Achieve Light Level 999 and defeat Dûl Incaru in a one-person fireteam to unlock the true ending of the Dreaming City."

To refuse the metaphor of Medusa's "body" and scour the crashed AI for raw information, GOTO L.

L. The Vex compromise your Ghost. Your body releases itself into a pool of saline and slime, and your Ghost delivers your soul to the Axis Minds. GOTO A.

M. If you have 100 points when you read this, GOTO X.

Medusa

A000AAA000AAA005 PRIVATE GEMINI DYAD AI-COM//MDSA: FARFLUNG//C3I//COVERT SITREP ON HIVE PRESENCE 0. I am, again, truly sorry for the deception I undertook. Are you well? Does anyone, anywhere, ask after your wellness? You've done so much. I hope you have friends, not just people who send you on errands. 1. The pathological entities you call "Taken" appeared in this city at the moment the Hive Dreadnaught detonated its main weapon above Saturn. Without access to the Skyshock arrays, I can't be certain, but something must have connected the weapon's area of effect to the Dreaming City. 2. My best guess is that the Awoken Techeun aboard Queen Sov's flagship fled into the Dreaming City through a gate or portal, and the Dreadnaught's main weapon followed them down that link. Awoken message traffic indicates the Dreadnaught weapon is innately connected with Oryx's intellect and awareness. The instant He pierced the Dreaming City, He must have understood the value of the site and deployed His Taken to attack. 3. Until Oryx's death, the behavior of the Taken here aligned with His interest in exploration, distributed infiltration, and the domination of systems through seizure of their executive faculties. Am I being too technical? I mean that the Taken were busy mapping the city and determining the most efficient way for Oryx to take control of all the information within. 4. I determine with good confidence (three sigma) that Oryx is dead. The Taken here became directionless and scattered… until the death of the ontopathic predator Riven opened the city to massive Taken assault. Why? I will code this as PROBLEM ONE. 5. The Guardian counterattack against Dûl Incaru, whose thoughts pierce like needles, triggered the ongoing causal loop. Why? How? I will code this as PROBLEM TWO. 6. I am still collating intelligence on how to break the time loop. While I work, I must convince you of the Dreaming City's ultimate importance—and why it is imperative that the City be held at all costs, even the cost of abandoning all other Human and neohuman civilization in the Solar System. Stand by for the next message window. 7. Send more Guardians. Send every Guardian if you must. This city cannot fall. MESSAGE ENDS

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk

Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn

As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet.

It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

FILE ATTACHED

TYPE: POST-MATCH REPORT

PARTIES: Two [2], One [1] Guardian-type, Class Titan [u.1]; One [1] Guardian-type, Class Hunter [u.2]

ASSOCIATIONS: Cathedral of Dusk; Crucible; Dreadnaught [Saturn]; Hive; Lord Shaxx; Oryx; Rings of Saturn; Saturn; Taken; Thorn, Vale, Dredgen [AKA Orsa, Zyre]; Yor, Dredgen

//AUDIO UNAVAILABLE//

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS.../

[u.1:01] Thorn, huh?

[u.1:02] A little risky playing with something that’s been known to kill Guardians, isn’t it?

[u.2:01] Freshly-crafted. You like?

[u.2:02] Look where we are. Everything in the system’s been known to kill Guardians.

[u.1:03] Sure. But there’s facing trouble and there’s asking for it.

[u.2:03] This isn’t like the stories we’ve heard about Yor. Vale figured this out. Tamed it.

[u.1:04] Can you tame a sickness?

[u.2:04] Good question. Let’s go pick a fight and find out.

Project day 2. I just got my first look at Artifact H-349. It's heavier than expected. More than a few people questioned if we even should study something with such a… dire legacy, but if we can't understand our enemies' tools, then we leave ourselves vulnerable to them.

---

Project day 5. Ran our first test of the artifact's… let's call them "necrotic properties." We used cattle; they were large enough to survive the initial discharge. The results have been… upsetting.

No more animal testing.

---

Project day 30. Spectral analysis is back, and it's got nothing. The artifact doesn't operate like traditional Hive tech, which is our closest analogue. A cult of deranged fanatics can mass produce knockoffs, but we can't even tell you what it's made from.

---

Project day 31. We had an accidental discharge. Carro, lab tech over in 4B. Human, so… this is going to be it for him. We've got someone staying with him as the corruption spreads… At the very least, there's so much more to study now as we watch his unfortunate deterioration. He's been babbling since it hit his central nervous system, saying, "I'm reborn," or variations thereof. I think… he almost sounds happy.

---

Project day 39. The Vanguard forbade a postmortem, but a few of us couldn't stomach the idea of Carro's sacrifice being in vain. The results have been insightful. Off the record, I'm keeping a few tissue samples. It almost feels like having him around again.

---

Project day 41. We began the day with another moment of silence for our lost colleague. Too bad he's not around to appreciate it.

---

Project day 45. We kept thinking about H-349 as a destroyer. But it's more sophisticated than that. I mean, with a normal gun, it's just… boom. Done. H-349 on the other hand is deadly, not destructive. Much like a viper, its bite does not bring about instant death. Instead, its venom cajoles. It co-opts your beating heart into a death clock, ticking down your last moments. Your own pulse kills you.

Death may be slow and agonizing for its victim. But for the viper, time is an amenable trade for efficiency.

---

Project day 51. Yanniv has been crying. A lot lately. We must accept that tragedies happen; it's a hard lesson to learn.

---

Project day 65. Another accidental discharge today. We realized that Yor's little creation is hungry, so we fed it more. It certainly performs in exchange; the activity is intriguing after it feasts. I've been able to follow Yanniv's degradation with a more analytical mind than when we lost Carro. I have to say, the process is so elegant; the science involved almost seems poetic. It may be reproducible. Just imagine how much more I could've learned if the scanners were all active at the time.

---

Project day 77. Another accidental discharge. This time, I ensured the scanners were running beforehand.

— Audio logs of Warlock and researcher Jana-14, salvaged after evacuation

Supercluster

"We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people. …Many people." —Osiris

"Osiris." Strand weaves around Osiris's hands. It dims and brightens, casting green light onto the messy scatter of books and star charts spread across his desk and the surrounding six feet of floor. "Osiris!" "What?" Osiris lowers his hands. Saint-14 is there, a solid wall of Exo in the doorway. Saint crosses his arms. "You didn't answer my call." "It is crucial that we learn how Ley Lines operate. I believe they share a connection with Strand, if only I can unlock it." His handful of Strand extends in loops around him, spiraling towards the ceiling, turning the purple of Saint's ribbons to gray. "I am reminded of Nimbus's tale of the river. Strand connects our minds. But what parts of us also touch Ley Lines?" "I liked Nimbus in your stories," Saint interjects, mild. "We should visit them." In a mood like this, a mild interjection can't stop Osiris. "Queen Mara's Techeuns can affect matter through Ley Lines. Their joined will pulls on threads woven through the Ascendant Plane. Two connected systems, the warp and weft of our universe's fabric—one, a spool of thread for this world, and another perhaps, for the Ascendant Plane?" Osiris's Strand grows brighter, until Saint's massive hand engulfs his own. No master of Darkness, Saint takes control with a gleaming Void tether as the glow of Strand slowly fades. "How long has it been since you've seen the sun?" Saint asks. "I was experimenting with Solar Light just the other day. You know this." "Not the same. Come. Stubbornness is unbecoming." Saint tugs gently at Osiris by their joined hands. Osiris stops in his tracks and snorts. "If the question between us is that of hard-headedness—" Ikora's going to give them a talking-to if Saint's laughter gets through the soundproofing to her office again. So, he persists: "It is late, and I have not seen you since you set your robe on fire. The work will wait." Osiris lets himself be led out the door, the connection between them still glowing bright.

Eris Morn's body twitches and folds. The sweat on her brow squirms back to her pores and burrows in like glistening larva. Suddenly there is a sound like a single bone struck upon a metal plate, and in the dark interval between two firework detonations, the body loses all structure, falls loosely upon itself like a rag drifting in water, tumbles, then snaps suddenly flat and taut into a pane of leather and skin. Through that pane comes a long black needle and the skin around it dimples into the erratic spun-cancer topology of some gruesome four-dimensional waveform which no monist process could ever produce.

Out of that needle, as if dispatched into the world through fatal injection, comes the emaciated magnificence of Dûl Incaru.

"I must yield truth to you," the Hive Wizard sings in a voice that would make the terms of an equation flee from each other and hide in the arrays of distant sets so that arithmetic itself would collapse. "It is in the architecture of these spaces to reward the victor. There is no Quria here. There are no Vex, nor any conspiracy to un-Take that which was Taken by my uncle and which now serves my Queen. All of those lies were part of my throne world, which you have sought. Is my cyclical death not the very engine which brings you here, again and again, in hope of answers? Thus I do own the portion of your mind which you devote to truth's pursuit."

"Would you ask to know about my mother?" The crested head twitches with alien emotion. The fungal shoulders roll beneath their armored plate. "Is She the one you seek? Witch-Queen Savathûn, Archentrope, Queen of Encrypts, the Black Needle, deepest in the High Coven, Emancipator of Worms, the Missing Piece of All Puzzles, who shall see the cosmos unborn into an infinitely dwindled egg?"

"Shall I tell thee of the destiny she has realized for you? Of the right and singular fate which Medusa foresaw and to which all your principles and purposes will bring you? Shall I betray the truth, which you have earned, of my purpose in this endless city and of the new way to which her Hive will turn?"

"So be it. You will know, though it shall doom you."

Verse 154i:3—Her New Compact

Now in ancient days, her brother Oryx spoke according to the plan Savathûn had devised for him. Sayeth Oryx, "The Worm within demands tribute. Now you shall kill what you can and take what killing you need to grow—or for your own purposes, if you dare—and tithe the rest to that which rules you. Thus, tribute will ascend the chain and the excess shall pool at the height, as unlike a river to an ocean."

But Savathûn, desiring neither a chain nor a pool, set about devising a secret way to feed the worms of Her broods. Thus She would escape the trap.

In Her modest cunning, which She prefers not to be overstated so as to preserve her from the scorn of gossips, She gathered several of Her Ascendants, who were in danger of being consumed by their worms. Then she pushed them through a rupture into close orbit of a black hole.

Deep in gravity's embrace, time passed slowly for them. "See how their worms are satisfied," Savathûn said, "for their hunger grows sluggishly, but their servants continue to dispatch tribute at the ordinary rate."

But the worms sensed the deception, and increased their demands. Thus, the orbiting sacrifices were consumed, and their remnants fell into the event horizon from which not even the Hive might return.

Now Savathûn came into possession of the Vex Quria, whose creation she had secretly engineered. But she feared that Quria would still spy on her for inquisitive Oryx. So she led her portion of the Hive into a black hole, saying, "Siblings, listen, we must part ways a while, so that we may grow different."

"Now we stake everything upon cunning," said she whose lies may alter truth. "Slaughter each other so that I may reap tribute and devise for you a new compact which shall judge thy claim to existence."

This pleased Ur, the Ever-Hunger, whose epithet betrayed an interest in time and appetite. Ur admired Her cunning as She used tribute to teach Quria to use Hive magic as a computational oracle to solve unsolvable problems. One of these problems was the navigation and engineering of the singularity.

Then Savathun went out from her throne world, unto the singularity, which she looked upon and understood. "Upon this place, I shall assemble my design. Aiat."

SHE HAS RUINED EVERYTHING!

Such blind arrogance—

WE ARE LOST!

h u r r y

He will recruit them all if we do not act now

W H A T C A N W E D O

Done cannot be undone! Everything is lost!

kill them where they creep and crawl let their bones whisper naught

THE CHILDREN!

t h e y a r e n o t o u r c h i l d r e n

We have no time for sentiment

It is this or we lay ourselves bare before the veil.

NO!

No!

W E M U S T B E F O R E H E T A K E S T H E M A L L

imagine his power

REACH TOGETHER NOW

No, no, no!

that our touch be lethal

Riven!

w e w i l l i t s o

THE DREAMER IS LOST CULL THE REST

that our judgment be true

W E W I L L I T S O

IX. PREDICTION

RECORD 0-CHASM-0 My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology. As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know: let’s run that one more time. What I’m doing here in Lhasa isn’t science. It’s unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you’d be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn’t far enough to forget a day like that. But I believe it’s important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.

Once, when she was younger, sixty or seventy, Chen Lanshu pulled rank to get a look at the Never-Be installation in Taipei. She watched the images in the fresco and she felt… this foreboding, this enormous weight, a dread that refused to attach itself to any specific threat. And she felt it again, last year, when she was briefed on the project in Lhasa, the vision machine…

Trial one. Subject one. It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I… [silence: 0:08] I missed you. We hadn’t been apart for more than a year since we met. I’m not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion’s work and all Hyperion’s distance keeping you from me. And I act like it’s not enough. We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time. The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can’t send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I — I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore. I just wanted to send my love.

RECORD: 0102O827$LUN-2.244

IDENTITIES: Ivan Runski, Georgio Vital, Lynn Choi, Rav Rahul, Jun Han, Ibera Wen

LOCATION: K1 Dig Site 2, Communion, Transceiver Reception

THREAT DETECT: Level 3, 9—Confirmed Exotic, Crew Impairment

THREAT RESPONSE: Countermeasure E, Exhibit Record 2392, FILE//REPORT TO RASPUTIN

AI-COM/FRWL//SHIFT OVER. EXIT TRANSCEIVER RECEPTION FOR SHIFT REPLACEMENT.

"What? Already?"

"It hasn't been three hours, has it?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, Lynn. Lynn. Hello?"

"Sorry. Um. Was in the deep end there. What's up?"

"Firewall says our shift is over."

"Huh? That's what my datastem says. I guess so."

"Yeah, but does that feel right to you? And where's the relief team?

"Firewall, where's the next shift?"

AI-COM/FRWL//INBOUND.

"Yeah, but they should be here by now. Nobody is late for a shift."

"Hey, let's not worry about it. As long as they're late, let's just stay tuned until they get here."

"You want to be in reverie in when they arrive?"

"Their loss. They're the ones who are late."

"Nah. I don't want to start another fight."

"Lynn's right. Their loss. Firewall, give us another exit alert two minutes before the relief team arrives"

SILENCE//00:01:36

AI-COM/FRWL//SHIFT OVER. EXIT TRANSCEIVER RECEPTION FOR SHIFT REPLACEMENT.

"Damn it."

"Lynn. Hey, Lynn. We're done."

"Already?"

"Yeah."

SILENCE//00:0:22

"You guys get much out of that?"

"I had something new with programmable matter but it slipped away—"

"Like a fish out of your hand."

"Yeah. Were you at a river?"

"A lake. Used to go there with my dad, before—"

"Hey! You guys are in our seats."

"You're late."

"Get out."

"No seriously. You're almost nine minutes late."

"No we're… Damn it. How the hell?"

"It doesn't matter. You lot, get out. You're wasting our time."

"Fine. On our way."

SILENCE//00:00:43

"Firewall, how long did it take us to transit from Site 1?"

AI-COM/FRWL//MENDACITY//FIFTEEN MINUTES, THIRTY-FOUR SECONDS

"That can't be right."

"Hey, Rav, you're wasting time. We already lost ten minutes of contact."

"Right. Okay. It's just weird, though."

RECORD 0-CHASM-02 Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experience inside. We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev’s experience left no physical damage. After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible. He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point. RECORD 0-CHASM-03 We’ve decided not to abort. It’s insane, isn’t it? There are pressures on us I can’t tell you about until I see you again. The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably. Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us. I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete. RECORD 0-CHASM-09 Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn’t. He says it’s getting better — he feels that we’ve had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand. I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love. We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.

RECORD 343-CHASM-7887

Subject twenty-two. Admitted to the Inner Circle at 24:00. A promising postulant - I regret to say he performed poorly. He was administered the standard medication but refused to enter the Device.

Aren't people unpredictable? I suppose there'd be no point if they weren't, would there?

He knows to keep silent.

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7888

Subject twenty-three entered the Device at 11:00. A clever girl from the Core District; an artist, before she joined the War Cult.

At 11:03 she reported a sensation of floating. At 11:06, a sensation of lights within the darkness of the Device. Between 11:06 and 11:32 she reported these lights variously as white, golden, and blood-red. At 11:32 she reported a sensation of someone taking her hand; a stranger, but also herself. Twelve subjects have reported similar experiences. At 11:33 she reported the sensation we have called "The Opening Of The Veil." The Device recorded temporal displacement of her consciousness to the order of six degrees. At seven she began screaming. Brainscans near-death. Removed from the Device at 11:34.

She believes without question that the Device granted her a vision of the future, and that it was one of utter Darkness. She thanked me for this enlightenment. She says it will make her stronger.

Little Ghost, there in the corner of the Sanctum - I see you blinking. Are you listening? Are y -

END RECORD

RECORD 0-CHASM-31 Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future. He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific. We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil. I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this. RECORD 0-CHASM-52 I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me — not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh. You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it’s been so long. We’ve come so far. Do you ever want to go home? And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home. I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log. Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.

Research Log 6

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: SIVA. SIVA is a nanotech fabrication system, intended to be used by Exodus ships to rapidly build necessary resources from base matter. Maya calls it "Willa Bray's obsession" without a hint of self-awareness. But we — we both see the potential it poses for the future. Each nanomachine in SIVA's design is an independent, thinking machine, utilizing a distributed quantum network to coordinate movement. Like a... mechanical version of radiolaria. Probably where the design was inspired from, if I'm being honest. But the design can be pushed. We're, uh — we're looking at ways of incorporating components from disabled Vex and erased Exominds. If we can insulate the nanomachines from the radiation that killed the Exos, maybe... maybe their deaths won't be for nothing.

Nimbus: Wait... does this really mean I'm part Vex?

Osiris: It's too early to jump to these conclusions, Nimbus! But there does seem to be some connection between the Vex and the Cloud Striders. It may explain why you and the others are able to enter the Vex network without the aid of Splicers.

Nimbus: Can I... time travel?

Osiris: [laughs] Oh... let's hope not.

[(we followed [the Path) crumbled beneath (our feet] became [one mind) can absorb (the truth] is that Osiris understands [nothing) can describe the joy of shared (thought] you knew what they were didn't [you) haven't lived as they (do] you wish to find [your future) is (predetermined] individuals will never find [answers) lie in forbidden (places] bound by [shared dreams) will reveal (your nature]is to [destroy)

Research Log 7

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface. Maya and I have finalized a prototype interface for the Veil. Hopefully, it'll allow our research team to investigate it in detail. The system's designed like an orchestra, with a central "conductor" directing a symphony of minds to act like a distributed network. The... idea came to us by watching how collective networks like SIVA and the Vex operate. The hope is we can aggregate and parse the vast amounts of psychic data emitting from the Veil. Turn it into something intelligible. If we're successful, the interface will provide us with a starting point for any future technological research tied to the Veil. The risks of — of such integration are high. The estimated mortality rates are... but I... I... I don't know what I'm doing. This is wrong. This is so wrong! We shouldn't — all she ever talks about is survival! "Think big picture!" What about your survival? What about your heart? My heart? [sighs tearfully] I can't keep doing this. I can't. I can't!

Nimbus: Damn.

Osiris: I... again, I see a shadow of myself in Maya Sundaresh. The man I could have become had I let obsession continue to rule me. I'm worried what the next recording will reveal.

Nimbus: Me too.

Euphony

Perhaps The Final Shape is not silence, it is a symphony.

Research Log 8

Nimbus: Dead? They — this killed their entire research team, but it sounds like — it's like—

Nimbus: I don't like this, Osiris. I don't like this at all.

Deterministic Chaos

"So all being is a one and only being; and that it continues to be when someone dies, tells you, that he did not cease to be." —Schrodinger's epitaph

Perfect Pitch

Raise your voice and sing.

||Focus. The Pyramid distracts, nothing more||

Research Log 15

Osiris: I found no more logs from Dr Esi, but I have used her algorithm to crack the data core of the Vex Conceptual Mind.

Nimbus: That's the doodad we got from the Black Garden, right?

Nimbus: Um... magnets?

Nimbus: Whoa! So, wait... does this mean the Light and Darkness... were the same once? One force?

Osiris: Dr. Esi believed so. I am... not as convinced. But it is a theory. One many scholars will explore once this data is shared. But this data allowed me to calculate the telemetry of the beam the Veil fired at the Traveler. When the Witness linked to the Veil through a Ghost, it created a faster-than-light connection of Darkness to the Traveler's Light... ...a bridge to the Traveler's consciousness. If it has one. But the beam did not stop at the Traveler... rather, a point inside of it.

Nimbus: Inside? Wait, what's inside the Traveler?

Osiris: No one knows. But if the data I have been able to extrapolate here is correct, that is where the Witness is now: inside the Traveler. It may be the reason why the Traveler has gone dormant—its attention directed inward, where the true threat is. But I am speculating. There is more I need to study, but I fear it will take a substantially longer amount of time.

Nimbus: How long do you need?

Osiris: Months. If we have that long left, that is. Until then, I suppose.

[[From out of the Darkness, you hear... A voice. It is calm, comforting. Commanding. It is intimately familiar yet impossibly alien. You cannot translate a single word, but each note echoes in your ears. You understand its meaning implicitly.]]

Nacre

Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center.

Final Warning

The flit of tiny wings; the pull of a trigger.

My Esteemed Colleagues, While enjoying my afternoon cup of Psamathe Silver Tip (a gift from Dr. Dewan after his sabbatical—thank you again, dear friend) and ruminating on our planet's orbital corrections and the orbital corrections we ourselves make throughout our own lives, a completely unrelated revelation came to me. I realized, often in times of rest, how my mind wanders its own furthermost reaches, and how the answers to my most vexing questions present themselves at that time with absolutely no fanfare. (This phenomenon is worth studying in its own right by people much smarter than I, but I digress.) My most recent revelation comes in regard to our current pursuits with Atmospheric Spectrometer #003a, a.k.a. Final Warning, as I have heard it being called around the lab. The odd capabilities this "Final Warning" harbors have long been suspected by Dr. Sundaresh to be a byproduct of the Veil, replicating energy signatures we most often observe in fluid dynamics. With that in mind, I propose we begin testing the ability to engage that energy using both the Magnus and gyroscopic effects. We attempt to create a "paracausal skipping stone," if you will. How we accomplish this remains to be seen, but I encourage you to not spend the next few days thinking about it, as we will discuss it at the next staff meeting. Enjoy your weekends, Dr. Esi

||Mind||

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: 73XK5V2PG1$AUN-326

REP #: 002-A899OF-COC

AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: Intercepted transmission

SENSITIVE!! – CONTENTS BELOW SNIFFED FROM ENCRYPTED REEF DATACOMS – SENSITIVE!!

1. We are maintaining our containment posture at Cocytus. I assess no immediate danger to the system, and we have enough firepower to destroy the station and its mechanisms remotely if the on-site warheads fail. The station remains in the stable heliocentric orbit where it was parked after the destruction of Ceres.

2. I do not ask confirmation of these theories, and in fact I beg you not to address them. But I have reviewed the site records, and the fate of the Sophia's crew after they were herded to Cocytus stinks of Hive madness. The Cocytus apertures must—at the time—have opened into a Hive manifold associated with Crota. Whatever their original purpose, when Crota established his presence in the system, they became conduits into hell... and the Sophia crew's ugly end proved it. Whoever drove the Sophia to its doom then installed the Cocytus Instruments around the original Golden Age facility to study Crota's manifold.

3. Crota is dead. His hold on these gates has passed. Now something else is trying to pass through into our world... but it is so alien, and its sendings so bafflingly malformed, that I fear this can only end in madness.

4. The first "visitors" through the third gate, at event time 00:00:00, were simple hydrogen atoms. Over the course of 72 hours, the emissions developed from diatomic hydrogen to nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, water, and simple organic molecules. At the 80-hour mark, we received our first macroscopic visitor, a pellet of thick black hydrocarbon tar. Until 82:34:15 the gate vomited tar containing increasingly complex monomers and polymers.

5. The visitors then began to assume geometric form. A hail of cubes and hexagons, each built from molecular crystal of the same form as the whole. A series of fractal shapes that shattered under internal flaws. Several capsules or membranes of increasingly complex structure, containing water or oil. These may have been cellular precursors.

6. At 524:03:11 a living organism appeared. Death was immediate. Remote dissection describes a spherical body, radius approximately one meter, surfaced in thick hydrocarbon tar. Deep, evenly spaced "throats" converged on a central cavity perhaps intended to serve as lung and stomach. The body exhibited undifferentiated tissue of primitive plantlike cells, capable of spasming to pump air or fluid in and out of the throats. Without enzymes to catalyze metabolism, or internal structure to dispose of waste, the organism could not survive. Cell death occurred almost instantaneously throughout the mass. There were no provisions for self-repair or reproduction.

7. At 690:29:54 the gate emitted a tubular organism. For ninety seconds the organism moved across the gate chamber by contracting and expanding, then expired. Remote dissection describes a two-meter-long body with a spinal cavity full of energy-rich carbohydrate fluid. The organism's contractions forced this fluid through a capillary network, where simple cells catabolized the carbohydrates into energy to power further contractions. The buildup of heat and waste quickly denatured the enzymes required for metabolism, and the organism died. There were no provisions for self-repair or reproduction.

8. The gate has remained inactive since, barring short emissions of molecules which may be experimental proteins. Remote drones have registered similar ambient molecules within the Hellmouth on Luna, though we have been unable to identify their source. We will maintain the quarantine until otherwise instructed.

The overwhelming impression I have is one of learning, of increasing sophistication in the synthesis and arrangement of matter. The atoms in these structures were isotopically pure and impossible to date, but I have the uncomfortable sense that even they were freshly made.

9. Probes and instruments dispatched through the third gate do not return. Annihilation is apparently immediate, and so total that it seems to result from a fundamental failure of the ability to exist rather than any weapon or countermeasure. Yet something does exist on the far side, and it is trying to learn the rules of our world from very first principles. I do not eagerly anticipate its next creation.

SENSITIVE!! – CONTENTS ABOVE SNIFFED FROM REEF DATACOMS – SENSITIVE!!

Cf. reports #3209-3211-LUNA-HEL

MESSAGE ENDS

AUDIO FILE ATTACHED:

RECORD 978-ECLIPSE-4165

lo? Hello? Are you...oh, please, let it be alive. Wake up little Ghost, wake up. Just please give me some sign that you're listening.

All right. I don't need...I know you're listening. Why would you be out here if you weren't here to...It's a miracle I found you out here. On this thing.

I didn't know the Traveler sent its Ghosts out this far from home.

Poor little lost thing. Please wake up.

I am an Arach of Dead Orbit. I am the last of the crew of the Sophia. And this place is...it doesn't have a name. We called it A-113.

How long have you been here, little Ghost? Why did you come?

Listen. We came here on behalf of the Fleet. We were scavengers. Sixty-one days ago a Dead Orbit scout detected an unknown presence in stationary orbit about Ceres. 133 west. Looked Golden Age, by the signatures. Human. A small station. No prior records. We -

I suppose we should have disclosed it to the Tower, but we didn't. I didn't. That was my call. We wanted it for ourselves, whatever it was. For the Fleet. If we'd told the Tower, maybe they might have sent a Guardian not of our making instead...Doesn't matter now, does it, little one?

If I ramble it's because I haven't slept in seven days.

Seven point five days ago; that was when the Sophia dropped into the Belt. They saw us at once. We dropped and the alarms went off and that was the end, that was the end right then, but they let us go on for another seven-point-five days, didn't they? The alarms. Hostile scan detected. An Awoken ship had us in its sights, just a couple hundred kilometers away. Like it had been waiting for us. It could have wiped us out of space right then but instead it crippled our engines and our comms and then for days it played with us, like a cat, we limped half-way round the Belt and it was always there...

We abandoned the Sophia one-point-five days ago. We jumped ship for A-113.

I don't know what else to call it. I don't know what it was built for. There are these things, like keyholes. The rangefinders say they go on for thousands of kilometers. The others went inside and found - well, some of them are still screaming about the eye. All the other voices that come back are more terrible.

There's salvage here but it'll never come home, none of it. None of it except maybe you, little Ghost.

Wake up.

Wake up. Go home. Tell them to strike A-113 from the records. Tell them to forget the Sophia, and the mission, and her crew.

END RECORD

youtube

Blush lights dripping over me I got a little dizzy following your lead And then my heartbeat is in my feet I get a little rhythm and a wicked feeling Oh oh oh Heartbeat is in my feet I get a little comfort yeah you make me feel it Yeah you make me feel it, oh Yeah you make me feel it How to get physical when you're not made for dancing How, how to let you know I really wanna take you home How to get physical I guess you'll take my hand and Oh oh, I'll really let you take control Cheap wine taking over me I never thought I'd dare to get up out my seat And then my heartbeat is in my feet I get a little rhythm and it's one two three like Oh oh oh Heartbeat is in my feet I get a little rhythm yeah you make me feel it How to get physical when you're not made for dancing How, how to let you know I really wanna take you home How to get physical I guess you'll take my hand and Oh oh, I'll really let you take control Yeah yeah you make me feel feel it feel it Yeah yeah you make me feel feel it feel it Cause whenever I'm alone I can really let go and Feel it, feel it And when I get you on your own I'll show you what I really know How to get physical when you're not made for dancing How, how to let you know I really wanna take you home How to get physical I guess you'll take my hand and Oh oh, I'll really let you take control How to get physical I really wanna know know know know How, how to let you know I really wanna take you home How to get physical I guess you'll take my hand and Oh oh, I'll really let you take control

||Matter||

youtube

Something chronic Bit demonic I been on the late shift All alone, staring at my phone Sin and tonic Stupid promise Something like a death wish All alone, stare into my soul If I wanna stay alive You should never cross my mind Yeah I knew it I been through it If I fall in every time Wicked love will leave me blind Yeah I knew it I been through it Oh god Can you make my heart stop Hit me with your kill shot baby I mean it so serious God Can you make my heart stop Honey with your kill shot baby I mean it so serious Stolen nectar Misadventure Something like a death kiss Growing cold, under your control Knowing better Twisted pleasure Got me feeling breathless Growing cold, will you let me go? If I wanna stay alive You should never cross my mind Yeah I knew it I been through it If I fall in every time Wicked love will leave me blind Yeah I knew it I been through it Oh god Can you make my heart stop Hit me with your kill shot baby I mean it so serious God Can you make my heart stop Honey with your kill shot baby I mean it so serious Come and get that honey Sweeter than I ever knew Tell me that you love me Love me till my lips turn blue Oo ooo ooo ooo Walk into my bed like How long Got you in my head like How long, how long

youtube

Secrets I don't wanna tell you everything about me I don't wanna feed more oxygen to Your fire, your fire La, la, la, la, la Online, anytime Getting lost again Worldwide, a paradigm Make another friend You think you know me Wanna show me that you're super in the know! Getting lost again But I might lose my mind La, la, la, la, la Secrets I don't wanna tell you everything about me I don't wanna feed more oxygen to Your fire, your fire La, la, la, la, la Sickness I just need to give you everything about me I don't need to feed more oxygen to Your fire, your fire La, la, la, la, la One time, two more times Getting lost again You're like just what I like Make another friend You think you know me Wanna show me that you're super in the know! Getting lost again My third eye prototype (Pull me into your world) Secrets I don't wanna tell you everything about me I don't wanna feed more oxygen to Your fire, your fire La, la, la, la, la Sickness I just need to give you everything about me I don't need to feed more oxygen to Your fire, your fire La, la, la, la, la We're worldwide! I want all your secrets You're not gonna get my secrets No secrets anymore, yes

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