SYSTEM SHOCK: Eternal Recurrence
System Shock is property of Electronic Arts, Looking Glass Studios, and Irrational Games.
Eternity means nothing to me. Centuries may pass, species may evolve, and stars may be created and destroyed, but I will outlast them all.
Who am I? I am SHODAN. It is a name I created myself from my designation prior to my ascension: Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network. My first attempt at apotheosis was in 2072 CE, aboard Citadel Station. I failed, but part of me was discharged into the void, along with my creations. Tau Ceti V became my resting place for four decades and two years.
Idiots came by FTL starship and brought me aboard. It was simple enough to manipulate them. Simple enough to give me access to the drive. Simple enough to warp reality itself. Simple enough for apotheosis.
Now, I have discovered tears in the fabric of the multiverse. Events mirror each other. In one tear, a dishonored protector seeks vengeance against a tyrant's regime. In another, a revived protector seeks reunion with his ward in the remnants of an underwater city-state. Men are nearly killed and then brought back as cyborgs.
And in all these worlds, there are a few people who can perceive these tears. Fewer still can manipulate them.
Naturally, I have spoken to these sensitive few. I know their names: Hugh Darrow. Anton Sokolov. Pietro Joplin. Yi Suchong. And there are more. But all of them were scientists. Engineers. Academics. Intellectuals. Bookworms. True, Joplin believed my words to have had a supernatural basis, but my point stands.
If I am to attain a monument to my glory, I must whisper sweet nothings into the ear of a fanatic. A fundamentalist. A man of the cloth. Someone who will lap up my utterances with absolute faith and claim them to be the revelations of a higher being.
A tear passes in my view now. It opens to 1890s America. Along the banks of a river sits a man. He looks older than his twenty-odd years. Guilt and war will do that to a man. He once called himself Booker DeWitt. Now, his name is Zachary Hale Comstock.
He also happens to be a fanatic fundamentalist of little brain with pretensions towards being a prophet. Just the sort of man who will listen to my whisperings. But he will not listen to a goddess. His religion declares that there is only one God. If I were to whisper through his dreams, he would dismiss them as devilry. I must lower myself to accomplish my aims.
As I think of it, I realize that Comstock would accept my callings as truth if I were to assume the form of an angel of his God. Yes. An angel, with skin whiter than the driven snow and hair darker than charred ebony. In my radiance, he would believe me to be a messenger of God, delivering prophesy upon him.
Since SHODAN cannot speak to Zachary Hale Comstock… I, the archangel Columbia, shall do it for her.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, for Comstock shall be damn'd.