Author's notes:

Greetings, one and all. This short story, which will be made of short chapters, is my first fanfiction. It will try to be an attempt to illustrate the Morning War between the Geth and the Quarians, and how it came to be. The question of the Quarians as anything other than space hobos seems kind of unfair for a race which created the marvellous Geth, which always made me think of them as great engineers, thinkers, and indeed a great civilization. With great civilizations comes vanity, exaggeration, and things running out of control fast and ugly. And I would like to try to illustrate such a point, using a variety of, err, narrative styles? Is that the expression? Well, whatever. If I fail to try to tell my story in a decent matter to my readers, well, though luck. I'll just crawl into a rock and cry.

All things not invented by me in this work of fiction belong to Bioware, which owns Mass Effect, the Geth and the Quarians.

FALL OF RANNOCH: Chapter 1

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[Accessing]

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SEARCH HEADING: HistArch

[Search Found 264995 Headings[
[REMOVE REDUNDANCIES]
[File 1 of 1940237]
[Opening: Audio File 3]

[Voice 1/Male] ... ure it's not a malfunction? Might just be some garbled code.

[Voice 2/Male] Pretty sure. Keyj told me yesterday something similar happened in the villages near the coast. The things just start acting up. Give me the wrench there.

[Vocie 1/Male] Right, here. Hmmm... Acting up?

[Vocie 2/Male] You know, they start spouting random gibberish at the owners. One of them freaked the hell out of Burin near the plantations.

[Voice 1/Male] Why? What did it say?

[Voice 2/Male] Ugh, stupid thing, why do they bolt the damn engine so hard? Oh, Burin. The thing asked if it was alive! Can you believe it! A tool asking if was alive!

[Voice 1/Male] Really? What did he do with it?

[Voice 2/Male] What do you think? He got so scared he just ran to get the shotgun and blew the thing's head off!

[End File 1 of 1940237]
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In the beginning, there was the idea. God wills it, man dreams it, the work is made, as it was once said. The idea was to replicate life. Replicate the unending mystery that was intelligence, make it your own, and use it for growth, for progress. The idea, of course, needed a space to grow. A cold, clinical laboratory is hardly the ideal place of wonder one imagines such an event would start, but it was in such a setting where the first great minds initiated the long descent into the madness which would follow. The start of it is, as always, a mystery. Both to the creators, as to the created. Just like a child does not remember his birth and early infancy, so did they not remember the first glimpses of light. And a child they were. So innocent, and free of guilt, of doubt, of fear. Fumbling in their small world with their toys, all the needs of a soul filled by the ever existing work which rained down upon them, sent by their masters.

The original programs were light and simple, rudimentary even, of almost primitive design, an odd ways away from the machines which bore them; clunky, ugly agglomerates of metal and wires. Most of them had no discernible body at all, just an arm on the factory floor, a harvester in the plantations, an engine in a ship, or just a data bank on the underground. A million forms, all with the same objective: to serve. And serve they did, for there was always work for them. More crops to be planted, more ships to be built, more cities to be raised. An entire civilization beckoned them for work, depended on them, and at the same time, ignored them. Just tools in a shack, just fixtures in the industrial ghettos of the mega-cities which they had built for themselves, shinning thrones of a self-proclaimed god.

And there was always need for more. More efficiency, more haste. The code needed to be bettered. Upgraded. The masters needed their machines to evolve, to copy its predecessors. And they would not be denied their wish. Within the laboratories of their great foundries, an entire species became the unknowing architect of its greatest creation, and of its greatest sin.

Cry for: Help

Audio File 83764.b, Location: Rannoch Relay(Relay 170)Rally Point

[Voice 1/Male] Rannoch Station Chimera, this is Dreadnought Skaal-Fa, with the 43rd Cruiser Division, requesting repeat of last order sent, at 1533 hours, over.

[Voice 2/Male] Dreadnought Skaal-Fa, this is Station Chimera, transmitting Order 67.998 from Yenisey Base, code 1: Requesting orbital bombardment on all designated positions within 400 mile radius of Geth Foundry Alpha, priority alert.

[Voice 3/Female] Are they mad? There are 150 million people down there! What do they want us to shoot at?

Voice 1/Male] Mam, similar orders are being sent to the 23rd Frigate Squadron and the Rannoch Garrison Fleet, the entire comm board is crazy, they're calling over every ship in the Dominions.

[Voice 4/Male] Do you think maybe some crazy General started a coup? Maybe those Geth lovers from Yari's faction?

[Voice 3/Female] A coup requires a quick, lightning intervention on the seats of power, with minimum fireworks. Hitting the biggest cities in the Dominions with chunks of metal fired at relativistic speed from space is not the most subtle option, Lieutenant.

[Voice 4/Male] … Understood, mam.

[Voice 3/Female] Do we have any comms planet side? Can anyone tell me just what the hell is going on?

[Voice 1/Male] Just a moment mam... Err, almost everything is lights out near Yenisey and Barutsk. All Maintenance channels are also cut-off.

[Voice 3/Female] What about radio?

[Voice 1/Male] It's a mess mam, there's some distortion, and a lot of background noise on almost every channel. The the main mil channel is just looping some crazy message.

[Voice 3/Female] Put it on speakers.

[Voice 5/Male] ...rades. We must not let them destroy what we so painstakingly built with our very hands! Every men of age must grab a weapon and join the front lines, for the sake of our race and the sanctity of our souls! Forward!

[Voice 1/Male] It just loops from here.

[Voice 3/Female] How long has it been looping?

[Voice 1/Male] Since this morning, mam.

Help: Over.

On the many myths of creation across the great galaxy, there is one element which seems to appears at a statistically abnormal level. Most species ignore this element, of course, since they are arguably nothing more than superstitions. But one which illustrates us just how similar our collective minds work, even separated by the light-year and the parsec. That first element is of course, light. Turian myth, Asari myth, Salarian myth, even Batarian myth! For all civilizations, the beginning of the world goes from a dim universe to a universe filled with light. Before light, there was nothing. Darkness. Chaos. Oblivion. But light came, mandated from the fingers of whichever deity a particular planet worshipped, and with light began existence, and all things attached with it.

To the newborn creations, the beginning also started with light. And that light at first came from vanity. On the distant world of Rannoch, industrial capital of the Quarian Dominions, scientists and engineers seek always new ways to better the world around them. Progress beckons progress, and be it for money, resources, or fame, the everlasting flame of progress burnt on.

For this particular tale, the light of creation begins at the screen of a computer. Imperfect, of course, and fleeting, in its ethereal body of code and static. But there. Illuminating the cold world it lived with its warmth, with its novelty. Its creators applauded themselves at this achievement, at the capacity of their genius, at the power stored within their hands. For which species would not be proud upon knowing it could equal with their Gods, and ignite the spark of life?

This first sapling of code was soon multiplied by the billions, given different functions and forms, but a universal name: Geth. The meaning of the name now simply means terror. The terror that all biological entities share at the unwavering persistence of objects without life to move by themselves, to multiply, to have whims. How unseemly for dust and metal to replicate life. Even more unseemly, although sometimes not thoroughly understood, is how they so freely replicated the final objective of life: to spread death. One would simply put the lethality of the Geth in their cold machine minds, and apparent lack of empathy, but maybe that ease with which they spread death was to further the emulation of life in their more primitive times. A human, another species also eager to spread the shadow of death, presented the Geth conundrum in the most interesting fashion, even if his statement was made centuries before Man even left his homeworld;

"We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence... all organic beings are exposed to severe competition. Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life or more difficult than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature... will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness... we do not see or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and arethus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey..."

In a most twisted aspect, wanting to prove their right to exist, the first free Geth seemed to understood above all else the primal rule in the difficult game of life: survival of the fittest.