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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 1 year ago

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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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