Ethereals: Unit
Gatekeeper
"What the actual fuck was that?!"
- Chan Jin-Taek, XCOM Templar
CODEX File ****
Subject: The Creation Initiative Specimen 009, "Gatekeeper"
Location: Blacksite ***
Author: The Creator
After countless days and effort put into it, I stand before one of my most beautiful creations yet. Truly a magnificent specimen. All those who considered my efforts for naught stand before the Life I have created here. To traditional and stunted science, something like this should not even be possible, let alone functional.
And yet…it is imperfect. It is not truly alive in the same way that these other creatures are. It reacts, it can be controlled, yet all of it is reaction and predetermined impulse. Not true intelligence, yet another attempted mockery of the real thing. At the same time I have shown that the theory is sound and possible.
Then again, the question should be what the definition of life truly is? What is to say that this creature is no less alive than one of those Human aliens? Our own limited definitions? The state of the bodily functions? If the brain is active or not? Psh, foolish and outdated; that I have proven beyond all doubt. Sana's own pet is proof that supposed death is certainly not the end.
No, states such as these need a new name.
Better yet, the established concepts of life and death should be abolished altogether. Life takes many forms, it is a collection of impulses and primitive commands evolved into different levels of intelligence, establishing arbitrary limits on it is pointless. Death is simply another state of the body, where a different set of rules is imposed.
Yes, that would be an interesting avenue of study for several projects.
No! Work cannot be distracted, it cannot be paused, not when I have made such great progress. I have created primitive life, even if that fool Revelean will not recognize it. Then again, he lacks the imagination I have, so obsessed is he with each species' place in his plan.
Fool. Species flawed to their core cannot be redeemed. The only reliable solution is to create perfect thralls of our own from nothing. Everything else is expendable.
CODEX File ****
Subject: The Creator's New Specimen ("Gatekeeper")
Location: Blacksite ***
Author: Geneticist Revelean
The Creator continues her wasteful and obsessive experiments which of course has resulted in one of the most unnatural abominations I have ever seen. Part of me is impressed she was able to develop something so…functional and, ignoring what it actually is, useful. It is aesthetically pleasing to look at as well, I quite like how gracefully it moves.
Until the shell retracts and shows the thing inside. I suspect she was talking with Isomnum beforehand, because that is likely the only reason she decided to put such a nightmarish creature there in the first place. When I see most species, just from observation, I can normally hypothesize how they might work.
Not so with whatever this thing was. Saying that it was…flesh…seems incorrect. It was rolling, deforming and reforming constantly, like it was alive but not at the same time. Perhaps it simply acts as a power source of sorts, while the brain of the machine is in the shell. That would certainly be like her, I believe, to think that she has actually created life while using a computer brain.
Then again, how she managed to force a disruptive psionic power inside the flesh is…disconcerting. It should not be possible, which makes me wonder how it is possible to push latent psionic potential onto animated flesh, and also develop the means to control it. What makes it more unnerving is that while I sensed no sentience, or truly any rational thought from the thing, telepathically it was performing the equivalent of a scream. I had to temporarily block my own telepathy to think clearly, and I am not sure if it was even intentional on her part or not.
It will be useful against telepaths, the Battlemaster will like that.
Yet this does not explain how the Creator could have possibly learned this. She refused to let me examine it, and as abominable as the creature was, I would have for the scientific value it held. The question is why. Why would she not want me to outside of concern about what I might find? Perhaps it is simply a matter of pride, as she knows that if I understood her methods, I could apply them to something useful.
Yet I have long suspected that she has been incorporating Sovereign-level technology and techniques into her creations, and her condition has continually deteriorated ever since we left stasis, and especially dropped off in the last few decades. I will have to speak with the Voice to learn how accurate this is, despite the dangers such a talk has.
Regardless of the usefulness of her line of research, and certain other aspects of her Blacksite, she must be brought to heel and end these experiments on her obsession with creating life. She fails to see the risks and there are some things even we should not disturb. Life can be shaped, directed, and enhanced.
It should not be created, especially by us unless we fully understand the consequences.
And we most certainly do not.
XCOM Autopsy ETH05
Species: Unknown
Unit Identity: Currently Unknown (Patricia reported references to a "Gatekeeper" extracted from Vitakara minds.)
Codename: Barrett
Alien Autopsy Overseer: Head of XCOM Research and Development Dr. Moira Vahlen
Audio Notes of Dr. Moira Vahlen
"This creature is….unlike anything we have encountered so far. The XCOM squad that encountered it damaged it to such a degree that there is very little left outside the odd shell that housed a being of powerful psionic potential inside. This unfortunately means that we will be limited in what we can infer from the remains."
"Regardless, from the video footage I have seen, this alien is…unnatural, even by the standards of the aliens. Without hard remains, I can only speculate as how such a creature could manage to consume an entire armored XCOM soldier without any trouble whatsoever, or what the purpose could even be. Based on the footage, I believe it is likely that this might be an artificial creation, not a new alien species we have never encountered before."
"I have showed it to several of the Vitakara assistants, and they are just as baffled as I am. They've repeatedly stated that psionic potential is extremely rare except in certain species, and the idea that one could be created artificially is almost incomprehensible to them. That it is not only psionic, but can also manipulate it to an impressive degree is also a mystery."
"The purpose of the creature is one we cannot determine. The references to a "Gatekeeper" Patricia noted from ripping the knowledge from the minds of Vitakara soldiers might infer that it is indeed a guardian of the Gateways, although unless Aegis has been withholding information, we should have had some idea that such a guardian existed."
"Nevertheless, the creature is extremely dangerous. It seems capable of shooting an energy beam from the lone 'eye' which caused significant damage to the surrounding area, but fortunately didn't kill any soldiers. Outside of that, as noted above, it wields psionic energy, manipulated by four…tentacles…which I find an odd addition to say the least. To make matters worse, the entirety of the flesh observed was emanating with corrosive psionic energy, which means that simply touching any part of it is dangerous."
"In addition, Patricia and Chan reported that they were significantly more affected by it than the non-psions. Patricia far more so than Chan, both of them described the Gatekeeper "screaming" so loudly that it had the effect of blocking all telepathic ability, though psionic usage in general was technically not disrupted. Patricia did say that she believed that it might be able to be blocked, but she detected no form of consciousness or sentience in the creature, which raises the question of how exactly such a creature could "scream" if it has no mouth or no mind."
Report:
Despite the remains being…limited, they have the effect of making this entire alien even more disconcerting. The few scraps of flesh we recovered do not appear to be fully 'dead', for lack of a better word. They perform miniscule twitches, of which many of my team, myself included, believed we were simply seeing things. But upon further observation, the pieces of flesh do indeed twitch occasionally, usually in conjunction with a brief and almost invisible flare of psionic energy.
We are not sure how this is happening, let alone why. By all reason, the creature should be dead. Flesh should not still act otherwise, especially without a plausible reason. When the main 'brain' of the creature was destroyed, logic would indicate that it should have completely destroyed the alien, killing it completely.
Yet this appears to not be the case. I can only speculate that the Gatekeeper relies on some kind of distributed intelligence of sorts, a starfish is unfortunately the most apt comparison I can think of, but on a far greater scale. But nothing about it seems to be changing, it is not growing in size or power. But the fact that it has no apparent source for doing these things is maddening.
The shell of it that we recovered is equally unhelpful. The eye, which might have provided insight into how the Gatekeeper works, was completely destroyed beyond all repair and salvage. We are only left with speculation, and considering the impossibility of this alien, I do not want to rely on it.
Once we learn all we can from the scraps, I will be incinerating them. We can't risk anything else with this alien.
Addendum – Aegis' Notes:
I have never seen, nor heard of such a construct before, Dr. Vahlen. While there were certainly secrets kept from me, a designated "Guardian of the Gateways" would be something I would have been informed about, as I was in charge of the security around the Gateways. This indicates that this was a recent development, or at minimum, a recent designation.
From observing the footage myself, examining the memories of the soldiers involved and my own knowledge on such matters, this has all the hallmarks of one of the Creator's creations. Such a creature is not one we have encountered, and it is certainly not natural. I highly doubt that the Creator intended to develop an alien to fulfill a specific function, more likely this was one of her projects that the Battlemaster or the Imperator decided to implement.
I also know enough that, if this is an artificial creation, it should not be possible. Unless she incorporated copious amounts of Ethereal, Sectoid or Human DNA, psionic potential should not be able to be forced upon a non-psionic species, at least not without major consequences. Revelean has failed to do it so far, Sana's own milder experiments show the same thing.
But if the Creator has somehow managed to overcome this issue, it means that psionic potential can be forced onto other species. I am sure you can see the danger such a realization entails. However, the good news is that until Revelean himself performs whatever the Creator did, the Imperator will not implement it. Despite his tolerance of the Creator, he will not use every insane creation from her Blacksite, not until the full ramifications are known.
But at the very least, Revelean will be making inquiries and then it is only a matter of time.