G'day folks! This little story marks my first attempt at crafting a complete tale for the eager masses. As such, comments are craved with a hunger almost as great as that of the Vortex. A little depth to the comment would be nice (How else can I tell what's good and what's not without someone letting me know?), but any comment at all is welcome. And now, without further adu, on with the story!
UPDATED: Got some picky HTML tags to work properly, now the story looks like it ought to. Italics denote internal dialoge, of either introspection or telepathy.
Asterite's Eye
Tedium...
Boredom...
Sameness...
Such had been its existence. From the deep time when it first came to be, very little had changed. Life had shed one guise for another, but it was still the same life. Frantic, darting, always in a great hurry to swim and eat and mate and die- Except for itself. It was different. It knew this difference. It needed not any of the trappings in which all other life found itself, for it was the final distilled essence of the great cycle of life. As it spun, each part underwent the changes, but always ended up back where it started. Or did it? There had been some changes, so small and minor that they were barely noticeable even to its own wondrous senses, that had persisted. The significance of this was unknown, or if it was indeed significant at all- But those were thoughts for another time.
It was weary of the other life around it. That life had no mind, no sense of being beyond a swish of a tail, a pulse of a heart, or the extension of some mandible towards some piece of food. Chaotic, unpredictable, undesirable. Such as one rather persistent thing that was attempting the consume one of its orbs of defense. Annoyed, it activated the orb and sent a mild pulse of electricity outwards. The thing convulsed once, then sped off into the distant water. This was getting to be an all too frequent occurrence.
Activating all its orbs of sensing, it sought a place where it could be isolated from these constant annoyances. They returned the presence of a small cavern not far below the area it was drifting through. Just slightly larger that itself, the carvan seemed ideal for its task. Satisfied, it threaded itself through the small maze of tunnels and took up residence in what would become its long term home. It proved to be a highly effective barrier to the annoying lifeforms, even moreso when a strange crystal appeared at the only entrance. It continued to spin and change in solitude, occasionally extending a part of itself into another form of life to experience what was happening beyond the cavern's confines.
The passage of time was easy to mark, but it had little reason to do so. Every once in a while, the slight change in power told it when the great source of energy was high above, only having a thin layer of air, sea, and rock to pass through. It could also tell how much absolute time had passed, as the surrounding walls emitted a low, slowly decaying energy of their own. Thus it did mark time, every moment of its static existence. Until one moment, when everything changed...
* * *
The silence was broken by a pulse of compression waves that blew apart the crystal at the entrance. Annoyed, it turn its attention towards the thing that entered. The thing sent more, weaker compression waves towards it, and it became intrigued at the complex pattern in the waves. Extending its senses, it analyzed the thing, and made a startling discovery. This thing was unlike any other form of life it had encountered. No gills, a curiously deformed air bladder, a tail turned sideways and while functional, it had a very unusual overall body structure. Now truly engaged, it stimulated additional orbs of sensing to further probe this most unusual form that life had taken.
As for the creature itself, it was just holding there directing more compressed pressure waves towards it. As time passed, the creature began to get agitated. The compression waves became stronger, and the creature came closer. Deciding that this was presenting a problem, since it was having difficulty focusing its senses when the creature was so close, it sent a mild shock outwards to encourage it to move away. However, this unusual form of life had an unusual response. Instead of fleeing, it became even more agitated. It darted around the orbs in fast circles, and the compression waves became disruptive.
Deciding that the information being gathered wasn't worth the disruption, it increased the voltage and sent out another pulse. Things quickly became worse. The creature, now frantic, charged at it and smacked an orb of control with enough force to set up a disruptive resonance. This had gone too far. It sent out powerful charges on a periodic basis to attempt and disrupt the creature's life systems. However, the creature was faster at disrupting its own systems. A second orb of control was knocked out of alignment. Then, in a final intense barrage, the creature disrupted a third orb of control. As the creature delivered the final blow, it unleashed a final desperate attempt to protect itself, linking all its power and defense orbs into one intense burst of raw energy.
The attempt succeeded, but not in the manner in which it had desired. Some unusual latent energy in the creature redirected the massive burst in a way it had never experienced before. For the first time ever, the energy emitted by the walls of the cavern was twisted and distorted, something it had considered beyond possibility. Then, the creature, along with the orb of control it had impacted, vanished in a whirl of water. Once things had stilled, it extended its senses outwards as far as it could, but there was no sign of the creature or its own missing orb.
* * *
It learned to exist without the orb. It was no longer mobile, but that hadn't been a concern for it ever since it found the cavern. It also could no longer project its power beyond the cavern, though it could still sense what was happening. Time progressed as it always had, and for a very long duration existence continued as it always had, just without as much interaction with what was beyond the cavern. This continued for age upon age, as time continued its endless progression. Then it began to sense strange things.
At first, it noticed that there were some creatures that were similar to the one it had encountered so long ago. However, these creatures were cruder, less able to operate in the water. This was counter to what it had expected- as time passed, things became better suited to the place they lived. However, these seemed to be following that rule as well as any other form of life. Oddly enough, it seemed they were changing into the very creature that had caused it such trouble so long ago. It regarded these proceedings with great interest, and kept its senses gathering information constantly, storing everything for future comparison and reference.
Quite suddenly, on the scale of time it was used to, the amount and pattern of energy found on the world it existed on changed radically. Where it had once been a constant low level with no discernible pattering, nearly uniform, it now came from highly concentrated areas and was remarkably well patterned. It studied these energies, and made a discovery so shocking it had to isolate the orb that held the information and re-discover it a second time to confirm it had not been a chance defect in itself. This energy was the result of life, but of a form so bizarre it had never even known that it existed. These life forms existed outside the realm of water. They had mastery of forms of energy that were far beyond even its own impressive ken. And they were as intelligent as itself.
It was that final discovery that had shocked it so. This was unprecedented in all the depths of time that it had existed. It studied the patterns, and discovered that these forms of life communicated among themselves. It longed to join in this discourse, but without the orb of control it could not influence what lay beyond. Thus it waited, and studied, and learned. These bright forms of life extended out, and from what it overheard, it found out secrets about the origins of life, the world it existed in, and even some of the secrets of creation itself. Then it learned a secret that caused it to forever change the way it existed. This secret was the manipulation of energies in a pattern that caused matter to execute a jump between absolute temporal states- as they called it, "Time Travel".
With this new knowledge, it was finally able to understand what had happened so long ago, when the creature had taken away its orb. The creature had been so unusual because it was foreign to that time- it had come from the future, likely this very era, as the ancient recordings of the energies in the creature's body had confirmed. They were the signature of matter that had been ripped from its proper time. However, it still did not understand it all. Thus, it continued to sense and analyze. Then something terrible happened...
One day, as the forms of life had named their basic time cycle, it picked up a surge of communication. Overlapping frequencies, maximum power, some completely undirected. The only common factor was that all were confused, and scared. And then they began to vanish. It regarded this with alarm, since anything that could threaten beings as these would surely pose a threat to itself. But the beings were not about to let the fear overcome them. A network was set up, supposedly secret to all, that joined the greatest minds among them into one giant intelligence to counter the menace. It looked on with envy at the being of beings, a form of life that was beyond life, just as it itself was. This mighty being discovered the cause of the disruption, and the answer was grave indeed.
A distant planet was the source, and it was harvesting the life from this world and destroying the creations of the beings above. The great linked mind came up with frightening things to counter the threat, that both reached across the depths of space to strike at the enemy, and establish barriers against the enemy's attacks. However, it was all too little, too late. The enemy smashed through the defenses and devastated the final refuge of the bright beings that had once been spread across the world. In a final pair of acts, final defiances of the flow of time that erases everything in its path, the beings fled through time and space to places unknown and left behind a legacy of information for any others that came after. Thus did the great city of Atlantis perish at the hands of the Vortex, and thus the final great gift to the planet from the Atlantians came to be, the remnants of their great information network, the Glyphs...
* * *
Time passed again, though this time it could see an end approaching. Every 500 years, the Vortex harvested biomatter from a section of the world. While life was persistent, even life could not sustain when the basic elements were taken away. It searched for a way, any way, to stave off the Vortex. Eventually, it came up with a plan, desperate and unlikely, but without its missing orb it couldn't even put it in motion. Then, the final pieces of its oldest puzzle slid into place.
It examined the creatures that had formed themselves from the pressures of survival into the form that had so long ago denied it part of itself. The match was good enough that the very being that could have encountered it so long ago could now exist. It kept the majority of its senses trained on the ruins of Atlantis, to see when one would journey into the great machine that could break the bonds of time. However, none came to that place where intelligence once shined so brightly. However, it noticed something unusual. The compressed pressure waves employed by the creatures were forming patterns similar to the ones used by the old Atlantians. However, these were so relatively slow and low powered that it had discounted them until this time. Upon closer examination, it once again found that intelligence had emerged and taken a form it hadn't predicted. However, this form was in the ocean like itself, and the intelligence was moving in a different direction from the prior one- this intelligence was epanding its perceptions of existence, while the prior one had just expanded its understanding of existence. It unraveled their language and finally understood what had been said on that day so very long ago, and it knew what must be done...
The creature had been named Ecco. Ecco had tried to communicate with it, but it had not understood back then. However, now it could recall the entire conversation as if it had just occurred...
"Hello, hello! I am Ecco. I have come as you requested me to from the far current of time. Where is the orb that you lack? Hello? Do you not sing? Why, why? Please, you must help me! Why do you remain silent? Hello? KEE! Why do you sting?! I came as you asked! Why?! WHY! KEEEE! Is your mind lost to the depths? KEEEEE! I cannot go without knowing! I will fight you if I must!"
Then there was the fight, and the temporal explosion that concluded it. It knew what it had done- nay, what it was going to do. The burden of knowing the future was terrible, for it could do nothing to prevent these circumstances from occurring. Indeed, such interference may cause it extreme harm, as it now knew how intertwined with the fabric of time it was. From time to time these beings, which called themselves singers, would come to it and try to communicate. It knew that they sensed its own massive intellect, but it had to remain silent. Finally, on one day that would be recorded in the great song of history, a young, determined, frightened, awed, and above all else, familiar singer entered its cavern.
* * *
It waited, for the first time ever concerned with the very seconds that passed. It was feeling things it had never felt before, its own well-planned speech suddenly became inaccessible, the spin was disrupted ever so slightly. As it turned out, it did not need to act first, for it- no, Ecco -made the first contact.
"Are you the Asterite? I have swum far, and hear that you may be able to help me save my pod. Will you sing to me?"
It stuttered. An orb of sensing warned that time was becoming disjointed, it had to act now. Otherwise, it would scummb to a paradox. It coordinated its remaining orbs of control as best it could, and began to communicate for the first time ever...
"I remember you..."
"Of course it was you..."
"And it was I that had sent you..."
The misaligned orbs of knowledge snapped back into place, just in time too. It had nearly revealed that which it should not. For a fraction of a second, it pondered the implications of wanting to communicate for years upon years, then nearly ruining its first attempt. It was all so unusual. But it pressed on, its carefully thought out plan once again in control.
"Now it is clear. I can help you by giving you powers and knowledge, but you must help me regain my full strength. You must travel into the past! To the west there is a sunken city called Atlantis. Its people built a machine and used it to travel in time. Use the machine to travel to the distant past before your kind existed. You will go back 55 million years. There you will find my missing orb. You must return it to me. Only then can I give you what you need to save your pod."
It stopped, having said what must be said. Ecco thanked it rather profusely. It knew that had Ecco known of what it had done, it would have been in serious danger of being removed from existence. It could apologize afterward, as the creatures of Atlantis and the many other places they once resided said, it was easier to seek forgiveness than permission. Especially when your own existence rested on the careful manipulation of knowledge. Ecco left the carvan, leaving it to its thoughts once more.
It felt it happen. Even had its orbs not been attuned to the working of the city, the sudden spike of energy was hardly unnoticeable. The time machine had been activated, and though the shakings of it were felt even where it resided, it did not fail. The energies focuses, converged, and tore a passage from what is to what was. And then they slowed down, and stopped, silent once more aside from the low energies of the few remaining security mechanisms. It continued to ponder what would happen, when or even if it would ever receive its missing orb, for quite some time...
* * *
A spike! Power! Energy wild yet controlled, random yet focused. When it calmed, it could feel its orb, missing for so long, far above, in the spot it had resided at in ages past. It followed its progression downwards, until it was finally in the same chamber as the rest of itself. The orb was pulled into its matrix, assuming the position too long vacant. Its great power, long held back, was free to be used as it saw fit once more. And it had a promise, the first it had ever had the chance to make, driving it to action. There was no need to hold back, save to provide the knowledge that Ecco would require.
"Now I am whole again with all my power. Thank you Ecco! Now I will help you. I will give you new powers."
And having said as much, it projected itself into Ecco. The experience was so totally unlike anything it had felt before. Unlike the earlier creatures, that had no mind to seek, to know, to perceive that which they could not. Its own energy was amplified several magnitudes over. The very substance that kept life alive energized itself in ways it had not thought possible. Will became energy, sustaining functions when matter failed. The steady downward progression of order was brilliantly reversed. Time now acted to restore and re-energize, not decay and dissipate. Its once farfetched and unlikely plan now had a reasonable chance of success. It knew that this chance must not be wasted.
"Use the Atlantean time machine to swim back in time to the hour of the storm. You will be taken with your pod. You will see the unseen enemy. Use this song to return to your home bay just before the storm. With your new powers perhaps you will save your pod."
It had given the instructions once again required of it. However, something nagged at it. A possibility of paradox. It imparted a final instruction to Ecco through the link, shortly before the time machine was activated again. A warning, to not interfere or even appear to himself in the past. It did not expect the reply.
"I know. If I interfere with myself, the consequences could be dire. If I succeed, or rather, have succeeded, even now my pod swims safely in the home I know so well. You gave me far more knowledge than I suspect you intended. Now farewell, for the whirlpool of time is ready. I shall see you again, if and when I succeed."
Before it could compose a response for this most unexpected yet surprisingly satisfactory event, Ecco was gone.
"And I did succeed."
Ecco was back. Mere moments after he departed, he had returned. It suspected that Ecco had been waiting for the right time to reveal that he did, in fact, exist twice over this span of time. It felt the energies had been worked greatly, and upon drawing back its power, it knew all that had transpired. The long tube, through which the Vortex brought its prey from countless worlds. The mighty machine, dealing out death to that which should have lived to sustain those that should have died. And the final wretchedness at the center, bent into a thing that could only hunger to sustain itself, as the expense of all else. And it saw these things torn apart, ripped asunder, wiped from existence and placed in the final depths from which nothing should emerge. At long last, the legacy of the Atlanteans had finally defeated the Vortex, and the world was safe to recover.
It was finally whole again, as well. Time was no longer looped, the echoes of possibility were stilling. It had all of its orbs, and could once again act at will. However, there were still some things that troubled it. The echoes of possibility still reverberated, very low, but still there. Time was not yet safe. It was not yet safe. It would require help. And the logical source of that help was floating gently in the water beside it. Ecco had proven himself to be strong, understanding, and capable in a task of importance to all that existed. Through the link, it had come to know many things about existence from Ecco's perspective, and Ecco in turn had learned much from its own vast stores. They each had contributed greatly to the world they shared. What was the term Atlanteans used for one such as this? Ally? No, that did not quite fit, it was deficient in some ways. It searched deeper, and came to the perfect word, the exact concept.
"I have much more to tell you, we are not yet done. Now, friend Ecco, let us talk of many things..."
-FINIS-
Well, that's my tale. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I certainly had fun writing it. Just a few quick notes on various items I presented. First, the Asterite's sense of time. It certainly wouldn't be able to mark time in seconds or hours, as those concepts are rather recent human units of measurement. However, the day/night cycle has always existed as long as we've had a planet, and the decay of radioactive isotopes is such an effective and constant measuring tool we use atomic clocks to track time when we need the most accurate measurements possible. I decided to give the Asterite the same abilities, though its clock was the constant low levels of those elements found everywhere, including the rock walls that contained it. As for the Atlanteans, I'm in complete speculation about what they did aside from the few clues dropped. All we know is that they were a highly advanced technological society, that while advanced, wasn't advanced quite enough to deal with the Vortex. I also added little snippets of conversation here and there- Ecco never 'says' anything, he just makes those sonic pulses. Vague, but great for weaving a story ;) Once again, post those comments, we budding writers shrivel up and die if you don't feed us! I now leave you with a most wretched pun: NANANANAnanananaNANANANA (Batman!) If you get it, welcome to geekdom.
UPDATED: Got some picky HTML tags to work properly, now the story looks like it ought to. Italics denote internal dialoge, of either introspection or telepathy.
Asterite's Eye
Tedium...
Boredom...
Sameness...
Such had been its existence. From the deep time when it first came to be, very little had changed. Life had shed one guise for another, but it was still the same life. Frantic, darting, always in a great hurry to swim and eat and mate and die- Except for itself. It was different. It knew this difference. It needed not any of the trappings in which all other life found itself, for it was the final distilled essence of the great cycle of life. As it spun, each part underwent the changes, but always ended up back where it started. Or did it? There had been some changes, so small and minor that they were barely noticeable even to its own wondrous senses, that had persisted. The significance of this was unknown, or if it was indeed significant at all- But those were thoughts for another time.
It was weary of the other life around it. That life had no mind, no sense of being beyond a swish of a tail, a pulse of a heart, or the extension of some mandible towards some piece of food. Chaotic, unpredictable, undesirable. Such as one rather persistent thing that was attempting the consume one of its orbs of defense. Annoyed, it activated the orb and sent a mild pulse of electricity outwards. The thing convulsed once, then sped off into the distant water. This was getting to be an all too frequent occurrence.
Activating all its orbs of sensing, it sought a place where it could be isolated from these constant annoyances. They returned the presence of a small cavern not far below the area it was drifting through. Just slightly larger that itself, the carvan seemed ideal for its task. Satisfied, it threaded itself through the small maze of tunnels and took up residence in what would become its long term home. It proved to be a highly effective barrier to the annoying lifeforms, even moreso when a strange crystal appeared at the only entrance. It continued to spin and change in solitude, occasionally extending a part of itself into another form of life to experience what was happening beyond the cavern's confines.
The passage of time was easy to mark, but it had little reason to do so. Every once in a while, the slight change in power told it when the great source of energy was high above, only having a thin layer of air, sea, and rock to pass through. It could also tell how much absolute time had passed, as the surrounding walls emitted a low, slowly decaying energy of their own. Thus it did mark time, every moment of its static existence. Until one moment, when everything changed...
* * *
The silence was broken by a pulse of compression waves that blew apart the crystal at the entrance. Annoyed, it turn its attention towards the thing that entered. The thing sent more, weaker compression waves towards it, and it became intrigued at the complex pattern in the waves. Extending its senses, it analyzed the thing, and made a startling discovery. This thing was unlike any other form of life it had encountered. No gills, a curiously deformed air bladder, a tail turned sideways and while functional, it had a very unusual overall body structure. Now truly engaged, it stimulated additional orbs of sensing to further probe this most unusual form that life had taken.
As for the creature itself, it was just holding there directing more compressed pressure waves towards it. As time passed, the creature began to get agitated. The compression waves became stronger, and the creature came closer. Deciding that this was presenting a problem, since it was having difficulty focusing its senses when the creature was so close, it sent a mild shock outwards to encourage it to move away. However, this unusual form of life had an unusual response. Instead of fleeing, it became even more agitated. It darted around the orbs in fast circles, and the compression waves became disruptive.
Deciding that the information being gathered wasn't worth the disruption, it increased the voltage and sent out another pulse. Things quickly became worse. The creature, now frantic, charged at it and smacked an orb of control with enough force to set up a disruptive resonance. This had gone too far. It sent out powerful charges on a periodic basis to attempt and disrupt the creature's life systems. However, the creature was faster at disrupting its own systems. A second orb of control was knocked out of alignment. Then, in a final intense barrage, the creature disrupted a third orb of control. As the creature delivered the final blow, it unleashed a final desperate attempt to protect itself, linking all its power and defense orbs into one intense burst of raw energy.
The attempt succeeded, but not in the manner in which it had desired. Some unusual latent energy in the creature redirected the massive burst in a way it had never experienced before. For the first time ever, the energy emitted by the walls of the cavern was twisted and distorted, something it had considered beyond possibility. Then, the creature, along with the orb of control it had impacted, vanished in a whirl of water. Once things had stilled, it extended its senses outwards as far as it could, but there was no sign of the creature or its own missing orb.
* * *
It learned to exist without the orb. It was no longer mobile, but that hadn't been a concern for it ever since it found the cavern. It also could no longer project its power beyond the cavern, though it could still sense what was happening. Time progressed as it always had, and for a very long duration existence continued as it always had, just without as much interaction with what was beyond the cavern. This continued for age upon age, as time continued its endless progression. Then it began to sense strange things.
At first, it noticed that there were some creatures that were similar to the one it had encountered so long ago. However, these creatures were cruder, less able to operate in the water. This was counter to what it had expected- as time passed, things became better suited to the place they lived. However, these seemed to be following that rule as well as any other form of life. Oddly enough, it seemed they were changing into the very creature that had caused it such trouble so long ago. It regarded these proceedings with great interest, and kept its senses gathering information constantly, storing everything for future comparison and reference.
Quite suddenly, on the scale of time it was used to, the amount and pattern of energy found on the world it existed on changed radically. Where it had once been a constant low level with no discernible pattering, nearly uniform, it now came from highly concentrated areas and was remarkably well patterned. It studied these energies, and made a discovery so shocking it had to isolate the orb that held the information and re-discover it a second time to confirm it had not been a chance defect in itself. This energy was the result of life, but of a form so bizarre it had never even known that it existed. These life forms existed outside the realm of water. They had mastery of forms of energy that were far beyond even its own impressive ken. And they were as intelligent as itself.
It was that final discovery that had shocked it so. This was unprecedented in all the depths of time that it had existed. It studied the patterns, and discovered that these forms of life communicated among themselves. It longed to join in this discourse, but without the orb of control it could not influence what lay beyond. Thus it waited, and studied, and learned. These bright forms of life extended out, and from what it overheard, it found out secrets about the origins of life, the world it existed in, and even some of the secrets of creation itself. Then it learned a secret that caused it to forever change the way it existed. This secret was the manipulation of energies in a pattern that caused matter to execute a jump between absolute temporal states- as they called it, "Time Travel".
With this new knowledge, it was finally able to understand what had happened so long ago, when the creature had taken away its orb. The creature had been so unusual because it was foreign to that time- it had come from the future, likely this very era, as the ancient recordings of the energies in the creature's body had confirmed. They were the signature of matter that had been ripped from its proper time. However, it still did not understand it all. Thus, it continued to sense and analyze. Then something terrible happened...
One day, as the forms of life had named their basic time cycle, it picked up a surge of communication. Overlapping frequencies, maximum power, some completely undirected. The only common factor was that all were confused, and scared. And then they began to vanish. It regarded this with alarm, since anything that could threaten beings as these would surely pose a threat to itself. But the beings were not about to let the fear overcome them. A network was set up, supposedly secret to all, that joined the greatest minds among them into one giant intelligence to counter the menace. It looked on with envy at the being of beings, a form of life that was beyond life, just as it itself was. This mighty being discovered the cause of the disruption, and the answer was grave indeed.
A distant planet was the source, and it was harvesting the life from this world and destroying the creations of the beings above. The great linked mind came up with frightening things to counter the threat, that both reached across the depths of space to strike at the enemy, and establish barriers against the enemy's attacks. However, it was all too little, too late. The enemy smashed through the defenses and devastated the final refuge of the bright beings that had once been spread across the world. In a final pair of acts, final defiances of the flow of time that erases everything in its path, the beings fled through time and space to places unknown and left behind a legacy of information for any others that came after. Thus did the great city of Atlantis perish at the hands of the Vortex, and thus the final great gift to the planet from the Atlantians came to be, the remnants of their great information network, the Glyphs...
* * *
Time passed again, though this time it could see an end approaching. Every 500 years, the Vortex harvested biomatter from a section of the world. While life was persistent, even life could not sustain when the basic elements were taken away. It searched for a way, any way, to stave off the Vortex. Eventually, it came up with a plan, desperate and unlikely, but without its missing orb it couldn't even put it in motion. Then, the final pieces of its oldest puzzle slid into place.
It examined the creatures that had formed themselves from the pressures of survival into the form that had so long ago denied it part of itself. The match was good enough that the very being that could have encountered it so long ago could now exist. It kept the majority of its senses trained on the ruins of Atlantis, to see when one would journey into the great machine that could break the bonds of time. However, none came to that place where intelligence once shined so brightly. However, it noticed something unusual. The compressed pressure waves employed by the creatures were forming patterns similar to the ones used by the old Atlantians. However, these were so relatively slow and low powered that it had discounted them until this time. Upon closer examination, it once again found that intelligence had emerged and taken a form it hadn't predicted. However, this form was in the ocean like itself, and the intelligence was moving in a different direction from the prior one- this intelligence was epanding its perceptions of existence, while the prior one had just expanded its understanding of existence. It unraveled their language and finally understood what had been said on that day so very long ago, and it knew what must be done...
The creature had been named Ecco. Ecco had tried to communicate with it, but it had not understood back then. However, now it could recall the entire conversation as if it had just occurred...
"Hello, hello! I am Ecco. I have come as you requested me to from the far current of time. Where is the orb that you lack? Hello? Do you not sing? Why, why? Please, you must help me! Why do you remain silent? Hello? KEE! Why do you sting?! I came as you asked! Why?! WHY! KEEEE! Is your mind lost to the depths? KEEEEE! I cannot go without knowing! I will fight you if I must!"
Then there was the fight, and the temporal explosion that concluded it. It knew what it had done- nay, what it was going to do. The burden of knowing the future was terrible, for it could do nothing to prevent these circumstances from occurring. Indeed, such interference may cause it extreme harm, as it now knew how intertwined with the fabric of time it was. From time to time these beings, which called themselves singers, would come to it and try to communicate. It knew that they sensed its own massive intellect, but it had to remain silent. Finally, on one day that would be recorded in the great song of history, a young, determined, frightened, awed, and above all else, familiar singer entered its cavern.
* * *
It waited, for the first time ever concerned with the very seconds that passed. It was feeling things it had never felt before, its own well-planned speech suddenly became inaccessible, the spin was disrupted ever so slightly. As it turned out, it did not need to act first, for it- no, Ecco -made the first contact.
"Are you the Asterite? I have swum far, and hear that you may be able to help me save my pod. Will you sing to me?"
It stuttered. An orb of sensing warned that time was becoming disjointed, it had to act now. Otherwise, it would scummb to a paradox. It coordinated its remaining orbs of control as best it could, and began to communicate for the first time ever...
"I remember you..."
"Of course it was you..."
"And it was I that had sent you..."
The misaligned orbs of knowledge snapped back into place, just in time too. It had nearly revealed that which it should not. For a fraction of a second, it pondered the implications of wanting to communicate for years upon years, then nearly ruining its first attempt. It was all so unusual. But it pressed on, its carefully thought out plan once again in control.
"Now it is clear. I can help you by giving you powers and knowledge, but you must help me regain my full strength. You must travel into the past! To the west there is a sunken city called Atlantis. Its people built a machine and used it to travel in time. Use the machine to travel to the distant past before your kind existed. You will go back 55 million years. There you will find my missing orb. You must return it to me. Only then can I give you what you need to save your pod."
It stopped, having said what must be said. Ecco thanked it rather profusely. It knew that had Ecco known of what it had done, it would have been in serious danger of being removed from existence. It could apologize afterward, as the creatures of Atlantis and the many other places they once resided said, it was easier to seek forgiveness than permission. Especially when your own existence rested on the careful manipulation of knowledge. Ecco left the carvan, leaving it to its thoughts once more.
It felt it happen. Even had its orbs not been attuned to the working of the city, the sudden spike of energy was hardly unnoticeable. The time machine had been activated, and though the shakings of it were felt even where it resided, it did not fail. The energies focuses, converged, and tore a passage from what is to what was. And then they slowed down, and stopped, silent once more aside from the low energies of the few remaining security mechanisms. It continued to ponder what would happen, when or even if it would ever receive its missing orb, for quite some time...
* * *
A spike! Power! Energy wild yet controlled, random yet focused. When it calmed, it could feel its orb, missing for so long, far above, in the spot it had resided at in ages past. It followed its progression downwards, until it was finally in the same chamber as the rest of itself. The orb was pulled into its matrix, assuming the position too long vacant. Its great power, long held back, was free to be used as it saw fit once more. And it had a promise, the first it had ever had the chance to make, driving it to action. There was no need to hold back, save to provide the knowledge that Ecco would require.
"Now I am whole again with all my power. Thank you Ecco! Now I will help you. I will give you new powers."
And having said as much, it projected itself into Ecco. The experience was so totally unlike anything it had felt before. Unlike the earlier creatures, that had no mind to seek, to know, to perceive that which they could not. Its own energy was amplified several magnitudes over. The very substance that kept life alive energized itself in ways it had not thought possible. Will became energy, sustaining functions when matter failed. The steady downward progression of order was brilliantly reversed. Time now acted to restore and re-energize, not decay and dissipate. Its once farfetched and unlikely plan now had a reasonable chance of success. It knew that this chance must not be wasted.
"Use the Atlantean time machine to swim back in time to the hour of the storm. You will be taken with your pod. You will see the unseen enemy. Use this song to return to your home bay just before the storm. With your new powers perhaps you will save your pod."
It had given the instructions once again required of it. However, something nagged at it. A possibility of paradox. It imparted a final instruction to Ecco through the link, shortly before the time machine was activated again. A warning, to not interfere or even appear to himself in the past. It did not expect the reply.
"I know. If I interfere with myself, the consequences could be dire. If I succeed, or rather, have succeeded, even now my pod swims safely in the home I know so well. You gave me far more knowledge than I suspect you intended. Now farewell, for the whirlpool of time is ready. I shall see you again, if and when I succeed."
Before it could compose a response for this most unexpected yet surprisingly satisfactory event, Ecco was gone.
"And I did succeed."
Ecco was back. Mere moments after he departed, he had returned. It suspected that Ecco had been waiting for the right time to reveal that he did, in fact, exist twice over this span of time. It felt the energies had been worked greatly, and upon drawing back its power, it knew all that had transpired. The long tube, through which the Vortex brought its prey from countless worlds. The mighty machine, dealing out death to that which should have lived to sustain those that should have died. And the final wretchedness at the center, bent into a thing that could only hunger to sustain itself, as the expense of all else. And it saw these things torn apart, ripped asunder, wiped from existence and placed in the final depths from which nothing should emerge. At long last, the legacy of the Atlanteans had finally defeated the Vortex, and the world was safe to recover.
It was finally whole again, as well. Time was no longer looped, the echoes of possibility were stilling. It had all of its orbs, and could once again act at will. However, there were still some things that troubled it. The echoes of possibility still reverberated, very low, but still there. Time was not yet safe. It was not yet safe. It would require help. And the logical source of that help was floating gently in the water beside it. Ecco had proven himself to be strong, understanding, and capable in a task of importance to all that existed. Through the link, it had come to know many things about existence from Ecco's perspective, and Ecco in turn had learned much from its own vast stores. They each had contributed greatly to the world they shared. What was the term Atlanteans used for one such as this? Ally? No, that did not quite fit, it was deficient in some ways. It searched deeper, and came to the perfect word, the exact concept.
"I have much more to tell you, we are not yet done. Now, friend Ecco, let us talk of many things..."
-FINIS-
Well, that's my tale. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I certainly had fun writing it. Just a few quick notes on various items I presented. First, the Asterite's sense of time. It certainly wouldn't be able to mark time in seconds or hours, as those concepts are rather recent human units of measurement. However, the day/night cycle has always existed as long as we've had a planet, and the decay of radioactive isotopes is such an effective and constant measuring tool we use atomic clocks to track time when we need the most accurate measurements possible. I decided to give the Asterite the same abilities, though its clock was the constant low levels of those elements found everywhere, including the rock walls that contained it. As for the Atlanteans, I'm in complete speculation about what they did aside from the few clues dropped. All we know is that they were a highly advanced technological society, that while advanced, wasn't advanced quite enough to deal with the Vortex. I also added little snippets of conversation here and there- Ecco never 'says' anything, he just makes those sonic pulses. Vague, but great for weaving a story ;) Once again, post those comments, we budding writers shrivel up and die if you don't feed us! I now leave you with a most wretched pun: NANANANAnanananaNANANANA (Batman!) If you get it, welcome to geekdom.