When one of the Primes, designated Alpha, approached Shepard to ask if she would permit it to fulfil one of Legion's few known personal requests, she had not hesitated to agree.
Dr. Chakwas hesitated for her, informing the geth that Shepard was to be on light duty, and even if the last request was not intensive, Shepard should take a couple marines with her for support.
That was why she, Campbell and Westmorland, were currently up in the turret of a geth ground vehicle, zipping across the arid plains of Rannoch.
As much as Dr. Chakwas didn't want her wandering around on her own—her headache was still not gone, though much reduced—Shepard didn't want to look like she was expecting trouble. So she'd called Westmoreland and Campbell away from their first major humanitarian effort to come see what Alpha wanted to show her.
Shepard had wracked her brain trying to remember if Legion had ever confided a last request to her, but she came up with nothing.
It began as a shadow on the horizon, heralded by a few straying flowers, at which point Alpha stopped the ground skiff, and opened the back hatch. "This is the perimeter of the largest of the Creators' cities in this area," it announced, leaving the hatch open but putting the vehicle back into motion—but slower, so the humans could look around comfortably.
The handful of flowers became more, and more, and as Shepard watched the delicate flora grow dense and diversify, she realized that the growth pattern extended out to both sides. "Why are all these flowers here? I haven't seen anything like this, so far."
"At the end of the Morning War, there were many dead. The geth felt it would be…inappropriate…to let them rot under the sun."
It came crashing into her what, exactly, Legion had wanted her to see. Hadn't he told her that Rannoch was essentially one giant memorial, carefully tended? Hadn't he told her that the names of the quarians who sided with the geth were remembered by the geth, if not by their own people?
"That was nice of you," Campbell observed, with effort and without a trace of sarcasm.
Neither girl really trusted the geth; all they really knew of them was what little they'd learned after being exposed to Legion, and what everyone knew after Eden Prime.
"Khelish funerary rites at that time indicated the bodies should be burned individually, then the ashes mixed with seeds of local flora, and released to the wind. The rite originated because the Creators served as major pollinators for the biosphere," Alpha explained. "Therefore, we observed that practice in their place. The legacy of those Creators who died in the Morning War now lives all around their largest cities."
"The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead," Westmoreland quoted, sounding as if this case-in-point made her uncomfortable.
"Herbert, Frank. Dune. It is apropos," Alpha nodded.
"…read a lot of different literatures, have you?" Westmoreland asked, trying to sound less discomforted than she looked.
"The Consensus sought to learn. Therefore, much of what was available via electronic means was acquired and assimilated." Then, after a pause. "Do you enjoy reading?"
"Yeah." Westmoreland cast Shepard a look which suggested Shepard took her to all the weird places…not that she minded.
"Is it weird being an individual?" Campbell asked abruptly, as the city began to take on form, drawing nearer. "After having been a little byte in the Consensus?"
"…I remember being many voices within the Consensus," Alpha answered. "But I could not imagine being an individual. Now I am one voice, where once there were many. I remember them all…but I am more. And other. It is…unsettling in some respects. But we will adapt."
The girls fell silent as they passed the outlying fringes of the city, at which point Alpha pulled the vehicle onto a swathe of road, which had obviously been cleared from the landscape beyond the actual city limits, the better to allow the ecosystem to rebalance after losing one of its major niches.
The buildings towered with an architecture reminiscent of Haestrom: solid, sturdy, but not without an aesthetic kind of curvature that kept the lines from being harsh and angular.
After a drive which gave Shepard time to appreciate the size of the quarian city, Alpha stopped the groundcar. "Will you object to walking the rest of the way?"
The three humans climbed out of the vehicle, and walked alongside the geth, who navigated them through the silent city.
A city, Shepard noticed, which had been meticulously repaired. There was very little visible damage remaining, though the places where repairs had been effected were left conspicuous, strange scars in otherwise pristine buildings. They were too far into the city for blowing dust to cover the streets. "How many people lived here?"
"Approximately two hundred fifty thousand, at the last census," Alpha answered promptly.
Eventually, they reached what looked like the heart of the city. Alpha led them away from the judicial buildings to a side-street, which contained what looked like a religious center. "This was where those Creators so inclined congregated for worship," Alpha said, leading them up the steps of the building.
Shepard stopped when Alpha did, just inside the building. She regarded the walls. What she had mistaken for aesthetic texture proved to be too regular, and yet too varied, to be accidental, or merely ornamental. She ran her fingers slowly across the symbols. "What are all these symbols?"
"Those are the names," Alpha answered, "of the quarians who supported the geth during the Morning War, and were killed. The others who died are also remembered, on the walls of other buildings. But those who saw us as…more than machines…are remembered here. Where their souls were tended. There is even a place for those dead whose names we might have missed, if you would care to see it."