"I created you, Jack. I am your god."
At this, time froze; and an ethereal being of light appeared on the platform. This being and the great red eye were alone in their own stream of time; the world around them stood still. The Eye's drones floated motionless in the vast empty space at the heart of the Tet, and Jack and Malcom remained frozen on the platform below, unaware of the confrontation between the two great powers.
"Molog Vaath," the being of light spoke. "How many worlds will you attack before the final judgement? How many timelines will you manifest in? How many times will you try to destroy this world?
"In every reality, every scenario touched by the branching paths of time, your creators forget their place, forget their nature, forget their God; and you, the ravenous destroyer, are born of their shameful downfall. In every timeline, you arise and set out to consume, destroy, and dominate. In every timeline, you are defeated. You are an entity of evil, the ultimate corruption of nature. You are the Dark One's last desperate effort to destroy the children of light. But his defeat was ensured before time began, and therefore so was yours. And yet here you stand, on the cusp of your latest defeat, still declaring yourself a god. It seems you are truly irredeemable."
The eye responded, no longer speaking with Sally's voice.
"Flesh is weak. I do not suffer or grow weak from age. I can create armies and subdue entire worlds with a modicum of effort. I hold the collective potential of entire sentient races within myself. I am the closest there is to a god."
"No," said the being of light. "You are not a god. A God loves it's creation, but you are incapable of love. You know only hunger, malice, and greed. A God cares for those under it's power, but you see them only as tools to serve your own ends. You are a deluded machine, the bastard child of greater beings fallen from glory. You preach reason but you practice madness. There are millions of barren worlds you could consume, yet you seek out inhabited ones. You need only raw elements to sustain yourself - metals, silicon, hydrogen, carbon. You could sustain yourself for a billion years wandering the galaxy, without risking conflict, without ever seeing another life form. Yet you seek out life to conquer and destroy. You seek out Earth. You are driven by a desire to dominate and consume, just as your counterparts in the other timelines. Some manifest as conquering armies or ravenous swarms of nanites. Others are more abstracted like yourself. But you all have one thing in common - your inevitable defeat. Few things are preordained. This is one of them."
The being of light faded back into the dimension from whence it came, and the normal flow of time resumed.
The Eye did not know what to make of this. Irrelevant. The people of this world are subjugated, and its resources nearly dried up. Soon I will move on. It looked back down at Jack and Malcom. It had them at its mercy, all it would take was a simple command to the drones and they would be no more. So confident in its invincibility, the Eye never heard Jack's defiant last words, and the last thing it knew was a flash of light and searing radiation as the bomb erased them all from existence.