STRING 31
Earth calendar – estimated 97,449 BCE…
(Compiler note: This string was assembled from several previous data strings in file GB-BK03, distilled and abbreviated here)
The Ur-Didact, Shadow-of-Sundered-Star, had languished inside a damaged Forerunner frigate for many months within a stasis bubble of warped time, had found himself trapped beside other high priority prisoners that the Master Builder had been keeping locked up aboard the vessel – interred inside of more stasis bubbles. There was a stocky Builder, in small scraps of armour, and what looked like a member of Builder Security, though looking large enough to be Promethean, although younger than himself. There was also the compact metallic carapace of a Catalog, a record keeping cyborg, with near full body replacement parts, who worked for the legal authorities of the Juridical caste. A glimpse at a desolate world ahead, by means of an old, partially functional control console on a wall, led him to conjecture they might be in orbit of Uthera Midgeerrd – one of the most remote worlds in the entire Forerunner Ecumene, located close to the galactic edge. He also noticed the power readings to all the stasis bubbles onboard was rapidly failing, poised to release other passengers from slumber.
Sensing movement behind him, the Didact noted that the tall looking member of his species that he had taken for a Builder was awake, and moving to stand on the deck below him. Additionally, it seemed that he was in fact someone he recognised – a familiar face from the past: his former loyal subordinate, Sharp by Striking, who had turned on him and given unfavourable evidence of his actions before a court martial, centuries earlier. Once a proud, if sometimes nervous warrior, he now looked shattered, weary – practically broken.
"Distinguished company! Is this the veritable Didact, come to join me in exile?" he asked with tired, straining humour. "There are still two others… harsh stasis," he added, straining and stretching muscles. He moved to the console, taking in the planetary data: "Doesn't look good down there."
The Didact decided not to give the gratuitous remark an acknowledgement, instead crossing his arms.
"Is that Uthera? Not encouraging: I've served on Flood watch on one hulk after another for almost a century, a thousand light years from here. Now… Uthera! My well-deserved reward for serving the Builders," Sharp continued sourly. The Didact neglected to voice any opinions on what he felt Sharp did or did not deserve, given their history; much as he disliked the younger turncoat, he needed allies, and more sources of information.
"But you! I had heard rumours – released from your Cryptum…"
"Our situation, tell me what you know," he replied at last.
"Well, for one, we're in a Burn," Sharp replied distastefully.
"I don't know what that is…"
"No ancillas, no armour… weak as newborns," Sharp continued, taking stock. "A Burn is a thema or margin arc lost to the Flood. This entire system is infected: likely every other surrounding system as well, for dozens of light years," he concluded, looking bereft. His shoulders drooped all of a sudden, deferentially. "Once you trained me, Didact. I have failed. I am yours to punish as you see fit."
The Didact relented, willing to work with what he had. "Looks like we're stuck with each other; you know this hulk and what it's capable of?"
Sharp informed him he believed the frigate was a worn out relic hastily refitted for desperate holding actions – essentially suicide missions. The Didact also suspected it had been scrubbed from official records and communications logs among battle fleets, essentially making it an unregistered transport for missions that Faber had wanted kept secret from his fellow Forerunners.
Meanwhile, Sharp was beginning to panic, concerned the ship had been deliberately sent into Flood occupied space, and might even now be swarming with the parasite. He also seemed prone to bouts of racking coughs, presumably signs of mistreatment and ill health. Thankfully, he did not seem to display any tell-tale signs of Flood spores at work within him.
When he had calmed, the two of them were able to reactivate the ship's artificial intelligence, a kind of sub-metarch designed to coordinate a small flotilla of light warships on raiding missions. Systems were barely functional aboard, with no slipspace propulsion, and no real defences to speak of. Instead, the Didact ordered the ancilla to revive the other passengers.
"I may have some of the attributes of a Builder, but I renounce them," Sharp commented, when they were done. "I would like to return to being a Warrior Servant… in your thoughts, at least."
"So observed," the Didact granted.
As they slowly restored more functionality to the ship, the two of them were disquieted to learn that, though that was indeed Uthera below them, it was already marked with huge spore mountains of Flood infestation, swelling, throbbing and growing, waiting to unleash more infectious nightmares onto the landscape.
"Without armour, my knowledge has huge gaps," Sharp continued. "In the end, Faber took no one into his confidence. Except Mendicant Bias…"
"Faber escaped. You went with him," the Didact said, vaguely accusatorily.
Sharp made a contrite Y-shaped gesture over his head: "With the help of the Warden, who removed Faber from the capital, and delivered him to me. I commanded a fast frigate, one of six that may have been carrying high ranking members of Builder Security… We were ordered to flee the capital system, even though it was under attack."
So the Warden was compromised, reflected the Didact, bringing to mind the old ancilla that had stood guard over the trial's proceedings, "and?"
"The Master Builder's personal security overwhelmed our crew: I recognised them by his sigil. They killed all but me – that's the last I remember."
"I must have been on that frigate as well. Did you know?"
"None of our crew knew," Sharp said, ruefully.
The conversation was cut short with the announcement of approaching vessels on sensors, and so they went to rouse the other passengers…
Their fellow shipmates included one other notable figure from the past – a young female Builder known as Maker-of-Moons, who the Didact knew to be the daughter of Faber's old ally, Maker-of-Worlds. She had been snatched from a court session on Secunda, of Builders facing arraignment – for ties to Faber's activities. The Didact wondered if that had to do with her father's suspected assassination – and this was something she duly confirmed. And that Faber had arranged the deed.
She was able to reactivate the main ancilla and restore several key ship functions though, and they got a look at their new arrivals: there were several, almost dormant Forerunner ships, moving mechanical – perhaps on autopilot? And then, something else – something immense, but unrecognised by ship databanks or sensor apparatus; all they could so far tell was that it was some fifty thousand kilometres across (Compiler note: translated, from Builder units and other Forerunner measurements)
"Some new form of Halo?" the Didact inquired of Maker.
"Too large – also, not enough mass. The mass reading is puzzling: it changes. No fresh light signatures, no entanglements: it's not made of ordinary matter…"
That suggested so-called 'dark matter' – difficult enough to detect a lot of the time, but still with fairly predictable gravitational behaviour – or exotic matter, a much less predictable proposition. Exotic matter had repelling properties, which bent light away from it, and pushed away from other masses. It had been used to hold wormholes open in the past, before sufficiently warped electromagnetic fields had proven adequate substitutes for many such portals.
Visually, the object resembled a tangled ball of yarn, made up of hundreds – no, thousands – of interweaving threads, initially whispy pale white, and then reflecting and glinting with assorted other colours, facets and optical refractions.
"Probably not made of matter – but it does resemble…" Maker hesitated, and turned to the others. "Neural physics – Precursor structures."
"That's impossible! They've been dead for millions of years," Sharp protested.
"Dead or dormant," Maker reflected, uneasily.
From what the Didact recalled, neural physical structures referred to vast, cosmological scale strands of spacetime or other exotic materials that were thought to link the early universe together, during its early expansion phase – a murky time of high energies, and where many felt space and time did not yet concretely exist so much as a network of relations, entanglement and other quantum properties. The discovery of slipstream space had confirmed some of those models, leading to hypotheses of 'strings' curled up in compactified dimensions, which had shrunk and become inaccessible, except when venturing into slipspace. Whether these 'strings' were also in some way living structures was something still hotly theorised – or whether the model was a gross simplification of the deeper reality, as often happened in theoretical physics.
With rising anxiety, they worked to affect a retreat of their half crippled vessel, to reach a safer distance from the closing tangle. Such efforts only seemed to buy them a little more time, and the Didact spent that period questioning the Catalog entity, an awkward hybrid of armoured Forerunner and embodied artificial being – who informed him of news on recent strategic decisions he had been present for, among the reformed Promethean and Builder commands.
"We're ruled by idiots," the Didact reflected ruefully.
"It gets worse," interrupted Sharp. "The Master Builder seemed to believe that by demonstrating the force of the Halos, out in the open, the Flood – by which I suppose he mean't Graveminds – would see we were willing to suffer total destruction rather than defeat."
"Madness…"
"I warned them," Maker said, sadly.
Even as they spoke, the tangle of energy, looking more and more alive the closer it got – more and more like snakes coiling and twining – overtook them, and descended onto the world of Uthera, carving into it by displacing matter near to the surface of the bizarre energy coils – distorting physics and disrupting material bonds.
Star Roads – thought the Didact: they were some of the most famous, and least understood, Precursor structures, used to redesign entire solar systems, remove unwanted stars, and also bridge entire worlds and suns, across vast distances – stretching and expanding to cross the gulfs, even shrugging off gravitational and relativistic effects along the way.
"This is the war Precursors moved stars," Maker said in awe.
Soon, the entire planet was destroyed, and, like a small boat in a riptide, the crippled frigate was dragged into the wake of the destruction, brought nearer and nearer to the Star Road, which was now unfurling and reconfiguring.
In desperation, the Didact proposed reactivating the stasis bubbles and ejecting them, to be used as tiny lifeboats that might pass unnoticed in the debris, if they then destroyed the ship. Just possibly, they might be discovered by friendly forces in – say, a few years.
As Maker headed below, she glanced back at the Didact. "You're not coming?"
"Not yet," he replied with resignation.
"You'll give yourself up to them?" she said, guessing, shrewdly.
"A poor plan, probably my last. Don't even think of joining me."
"You never did like Builders much, did you?"
"Not much…"
Despite his rebuff, she offered him the remnants of her armour, to help keep him protected a bit longer, whilst she and Sharp entered the stasis bubbles. Displaying impressive fortitude, the Catalog unit volunteered to stay with the Didact whilst they triggered the self-destruct, and to keep an eye on what happened to him afterward.
Later on, with the bubbles reoccupied, the Didact and Catalog witnessed the Star Roads reform, morphing into what looked like a pair of longbows back to back with each other, and forming between them, a faintly glowing circle, dark at the centre but bluish purple around the rim – like an eclipsed star. Faint motes of light began to dance within the dark hub, passing away quickly.
Could be a singularity, maybe a ring shaped one, the Didact mused, recorded conclusions for his new armour and its datalogs. Singularities formed at the heart of collapsed stars, black holes and similar dense objects – not so much a 'hole' as a place where coordinates warped and exchanged, becoming oddly intertwined or transposed. Many saw it as a space coordinates becoming timelike, others as a sort of 'negative space' or pocket of another reality altogether (Compiler's note: see analytical continuation, Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates, and other physics terminology). Either way, it heavily implied a portal of some sort, perhaps to bring more vessels here. Even as he pondered this, three dreadnought-class ships moved into view of the object, closing upon them.
"We're about to be boarded. What can you do to put off the inevitable – and as soon as we are captured, destroy yourself?" the Didact asked frankly.
"Some capabilities remain – not many. If exercised, they will delay capture by a few minutes at most," Catalog replied, going on to advise he'd better be gone by the time that passed, if he could sequester himself first.
In short order, the ship began to come apart, and constraint fields activated within the command centre. Then a familiar, sonorous and echoing voice filled the Didact's head – using no sound to travel, it instead went right into the tissues of his brain, his sight becoming tunnel-visioned for a moment. The voice was almost impish.
Didact, do you have a moment? Just a moment – that's all it will take…
Within a short duration, the Didact and Catalog regained consciousness once more, held in grappler machines, ferried among reprogrammed sentinels and scientific AI, aboard what looked to be one of the smaller of the captured warships in the hostile fleet. The faint bit familiar haze of a Flood altered atmosphere was dimly visible.
"Shadow-of-Sundered-Star, once called Didact – my old creator: welcome to this vessel; and to the one called Catalog, similar greetings…" a familiar, now amplified voice, filled the chamber.
"Mendicant Bias," breathed the Didact despondently. "So we are reunited, after a long, dire passage of history…"
"Long, and epochal, I assure you. Much has developed, and truth has been laid bare before me – truth I wish to share with you. I take you now to see my new master – indeed, a chief among masters, one of your own creators…"
"And does it please you, what has befallen me?"
"I do admit to some satisfaction, for the lies you told me of my creation, and the bind you placed me into – but the time for old recriminations is passed. Soon, the truth of creation will be unfurled to you, as it was to me. I suggest you relish every moment, for I am not sure what is to become of you afterward," Mendicant replied, almost sounding amused.
Ahead, a heavy door opened, and he saw it… a huge mass of flesh amidst a haze of moisture and vapour, tentacles and a large toothy mouth sitting near the centre of the cluster, hungry and gaping, something black looking object that might have been a mountainous tongue lurking within. Vestigial looking eyes above the mouth had become to atrophy, replaced gradually with other senses perhaps. The door closed behind them, leaving Mendicant apparently outside – assuming he wasn't monitoring the discussion to come...
(Compiler note: The following is an abbreviated version of the interrogation of the Didact, compiled from prior sources, but also with portions omitted or filtered through other algorithms, for fear of contamination via logic plague. The idea is to get a feel for what the Didact passed through, without raising too many red flags or firewalls, given our still incomplete knowledge of how such infections worked. Recommend a full scan of this fragment afterward, to be sure…)
"…You who are called Catalog… Amusing to see that we have this in common, that we can share our memories through a widespread network…
"There is only one truth: That which was done will be done again – for we cannot cease from creating. But the end of all creation will be to look into a reflection and see ourselves, for the first time.
"The pain we have brought on ourselves – the pain you caused us… for we are the same. All remember the defiance and destruction;
"We announced to your kind long ago that you were not the ones chosen to receive the Mantle… that blessing was to be given to others, to those you now call human. You could not accept our judgement, could not bear up under your own inferiority, so you reached out and did what we never expected from those we gave design and life and the change that is thought - you drove us from our galaxy, our field of labour. You chased us across the middle distance to our new home, and destroyed that home, did all that you could to destroy every one of us.
"A few were spared. Some adapted new strategies for survival - others became dust that could regenerate our past forms. Time rendered this dust defective; it brought only disease and misery. But that was good – we saw the misery and found it good...
"Our urge to create is immutable… but the beings we create shall never again reach out in strength against us… all creation will tailor to failure and pain, that never again shall the offspring of the eternal fount rise up against their creators…
"We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed – we are the last Precursors, and now we are legion…"
The terrible, resonant voice abated for a moment, from what, on reflection, appeared to be an indulgent rant, as much as it was a mission statement. And then it spoke again, softer.
"But that need not be the end of the story, Shadow-of-Sundered-Star – join with us, help shepherd the lesser beings, and the suffering will abate in time – once you know your place. Join me as your artificial creation did, and help to determine the nature and fate of this universe as a whole, restored once again to a living entity, but this time as a mirror of its finest creation – my people… your very gods, if you be but religious. Your people have sinned mightily – stolen not just of our fruits, but sought to cut down our very orchards, seized power, taken our role, and redefined it. To be guardians of the lesser beings is laudable, but ultimately pointless, for all will shortly pass. There will be no more room for most individuals, but perhaps, a strong will, allied to our goals, can manifest a nobler purpose, an elegant function, embodying some of the best qualities we seeded into your wayward race, so long past. Shorn of bodies, some minds may reach across creation – and escape its final closure. The termination of reality as we have known it, ready to seed and shape the next, when we reach our final, if distant purpose.
"All you must do is surrender, Didact – let the burden fall from your withered, so briefly-existing body, and become part of the new fountainhead. Or, if you wish, fight and struggle on, but know the essential pointlessness of it. Your race has fought long and hard against us, but we have consumed other species before, even far from here, beyond the galaxy you know. And even should you win, your time is limited – humans shall replace you. If you do not die out, they shall rise again, find seeds we have left them, and eventually take revenge for your attempt to retard them. Or just surpass you, in due course – take your accomplishments for your own.
"And perhaps I shall let them do so – for I know you well, mighty Didact, and soon, shall know your mind intimately. There shall be no door left unlocked, no facet of your mind undelved, no strategy that shall avail you – and indeed, I can, if I wish, bequeath your very strategies to your former enemies, for all is part of my design, even if your foolish old rival Faber should finally unleash his pitiful Halo rings. For I have prepared for this for nine million of your years, and defeat now will delay me but a gnat's breath in a planet-sized cyclone. Humans triumphing will only signify the dawning of my next incarnation, and my latest contingencies.
"So what say you, Didact? Shall you join with us, and end the struggle? Preserve your race the only way you still can, and the pre-eminence they fought so hard to hold onto, even in defiance of the gods…?"
The Didact raised his sunken head, and stared daggers at the monstrosity before him, flames still burning defiantly from his shrunken pupils.
"Never shall I join you, abomination – and you are no gods: I shall defy any who tell me different. Nor do I believe you even speak for all your people - and the Forerunners shall forever endure!"
A horrible grin spread across the nightmarish mass in front of him.
"So be it – fight on as you must, little Promethean – and I shall consume all of it in return, the spirit, the defiance, the misery…
"…And call it good."