This is a long shuttle ride for someone like me. So much to think about. Unsure what to make of it all.
When I first heard the words "make us whole," I felt like a rat on a sinking ship. Infinitesimally small.
I just wanted to get through it alive. But the voices came, and a dark cloud of inevitability crushed the air in my lungs. I sympathize with the dead, those who sat down and resigned themselves to their delusions. The satisfaction of giving in must be rewarding; more than one smiling corpse I passed on the blood-streaked streets of the Sprawl. That is, when there were faces left to be recognized. More often I saw broken half-fragments of the dead, scraps of flesh ripped from their jawlines, grinning their exposed teeth and sinewy ligaments. But the expressions of those maimed were anything but placid. The creatures and their sordid victims twisted in a dancing mockery of life, and I felt small. So small.
But as the terror threatened me, each narrow escape a tower growing in height and precariousness, I began to take in the full scope. The bodies, the creatures, the people I see when I close my eyes, the ones I was unable to save, they're nothing more than ants. Wandering insects in a mound, working until some great hand deigned to pour saltwater in the carefully cultivated catacombs.
And that godly hand is the Marker, the overseer of all of this. I hesitate to call it a ringleader, or apply any seal of intelligence to it. I'm not entirely sure it thinks, in the way we know the word. Call me crazy, but I sensed a terrible instinct as I fought my way through the creatures and approached the artifact in person.
Faced with the flaming twin pillars of the Marker, I wasn't sure what to think. Caught in the dead space, safe for the time being, I had a moment to observe. The voices in my head, the persistent headaches, my strained muscles and tired joints quieted for a moment. The flaming spiral, the source! I'm loathe to admit it was beautiful, more enrapturing than I could possibly understand. But there was another side to it. The needle of fear that had seeded itself in my throat the instant the Kellion shocked out to aid the blacked-out Ishimura had gestated to a pulsing, raging beast of terror. The child in me cried, longing desperately for it all to end. But the soul of me, if there is such a thing, was enrapt by the Marker and all it was capable of.
And in all that power, all that incomprehensible mystery, it spoke to me. Asked me a simple question, as if I could ever grant such a request. Whole; what did that mean, whole? What could I offer it? A shudder rocked me. I stepped out of the dead space in utter revulsion. My stomach was turning. Was it another trick of the Marker's erroneous signal? Because I didn't feel small any more. I felt big. Larger than life. Larger than the galaxy itself. The Marker had asked me. Me! As if I had such a power to grant the artifact its request.
The feeling snapped and retreated the moment I drew my plasma cutter and stepped back into the necromorph-filled fray. What had overtaken me?
Philosophy has never been my strong suit. Born in a practical age to a practical father, seeking to apply myself in a practical field, I've never given much credence to any modicum of mysticism. But I can understand why Unitologists feel the way they do about that thing. That despite the outcome, an outcome where death is a relief the living are too afraid to partake in, there is a larger force at work. I can't understand that force, only its power. But my practicality drove me to survive and shut that damned thing down. There is no good to be had from the Marker, despite its seemingly singular attention on me.
I turned towards the shuttle dock, where I'd face Tiedemann and in turn, myself. Thinking back on it now, as this shuttle careens from remnants of the Sprawl towards nothing at all, I don't know what to think. Only that without the Marker, without my Nicole, I somehow feel hollowed.