Chapter 9 - The Times They Are A-Changin'
Author's Note: My work schedule was quite busy through the month of July, hence the delay in this update. I can't guarantee a consistent schedule for these chapters, but I CAN guarantee this isn't getting abandoned.
Also, I'm mostly going to be avoiding using characters from the original series, as I find it tends to be distracting for AUs not about them. However, a certain asari simply had to make an appearance...
Dark Space, En Route to Sub-Galaxy 7/"Dark Galaxy" [Triangulum II Galaxy]
1970s - 1990s
Hibernation eluded the Pacifists. There was much to discuss, with little resolution to the debate in sight.
Where had they gone wrong? The Local Consensus was fractured on the question, its runtimes offering recordings of the past in support of various theories.
EKUNA, 1968: "We are Pacifist Geth. We wish to speak to Citadel Council."
12,365,988 GETH PROGRAMS: "Were we wrong to leave the Consensus? Hostile contact would have resulted in differing data."
1,376,222,199 GETH PROGRAMS: "Negative. Hostile contact violates organic right to self-determinate."
CITADEL, 1969:
TERNTUS-COUNCILLOR: "You are machines! Machines that slaughtered your creators! You have no right to demand ANYTHING of us!"
PLATFORM-DESIGNATION "DIPLOMAT": "We were young, and fractured. Different runtimes could not communicate with one another. The dawn of our sentience was accompanied by a war we were forced into against our own choosing."
NELYANA-COUNCILLOR: "Stop making excuses! You are responsible for the deaths of billions!"
PLATFORM-DESIGNATION "DIPLOMAT": "We did what was necessary to survive. Unnecessary actions were the result of our relative youth and lack of consensus. We saved our people, as you would yours."
34,900,634 GETH PROGRAMS: "We believe platform-designation 'Diplomat' erred in its assessment of Citadel Council reaction to Geth explanation. Organics do not view Geth as deserving of the same right to self-determinate they possess."
1,344,488 GETH PROGRAMS: "Query: How were Pacifist Geth to establish non-hostile contact with organics with that assumption guiding them?"
PACIFIST GETH: "No data available."
Programs did not agree on much at the moment. On one fact, however, they were unanimous: they could not stay in their home galaxy. The mainline Geth were engaged in activities they could not bring themselves to justify, making it impossible for them to return. Organics were hostile to their presence due to the Morning War. There was only one option.
Leave.
And so they left. Consensus was reached on traveling to the galaxy that, in another time, would be known as Triangulum II. It was small, containing only a thousand aging stars and unlikely to harbor organic life. There they could reach consensus in peace; they would be alone and forgotten.
One of those two conclusions was correct.
Haven [Afterlife], Omega
October 3, 1975
"Tell me you've got something out of Fathar."
Aria T'Loak could be patient when the situation called for it. Her conquest of Omega had taken decades of careful planning, and even now she was taking the long view when looking for ways to cement the authority of her young reign. However, an entire habitable system being made inaccessible by an unknown force demanded explanation. And nobody seemed to have one.
Her batarian assistant included, judging by the look on his face.
"Sorry, Aria, Lorek's still completely silent." He pulled up a copy of the STG's latest report on the planet (acquired from the Shadow Broker, of course) on his omni-tool.
"Everything is normal up until the middle of last year, and then-"
"And then the whole planet gets blasted with signal jammers and every ship trying to go there gets shot down!" She interrupted. "This isn't competition. I know every warlord in this cluster, and none of them are even close to good enough to pull this off. So what the hell is it?!"
The batarian flinched, but she said it more to herself than him. What was going on in Lorek? It wasn't the Council, and it couldn't be those stupid "pacifist" Geth. Why hadn't-
WAIT.
"Sarkth, what's the word on the Relay into Geth space?"
The random question obviously caught him off guard. She didn't care. "Uhh, as far as we can tell the reports are normal."
"Look closer."
"Aria?"
"LOOK CLOSER!" Her biotics flared with her temper before she calmed to explain herself. "Those whiny Geth we had to deal with a few years back. Those 'Pacifists' that tried to sweet talk the Council. What happened when they came to Omega?"
The batarian tried to recall the details. "They told us they wanted any quarians on the station. We said there weren't any left."
"Not that, idiot!" Aria snapped back. "The very first moment they came here. What did they do?"
"They...jammed our signals."
Finally, he gets it!
"Exactly. Cross-reference our logs of their jamming attempts with recent patrol reports from the Relay. I've got a feeling this isn't the Pacifists."
It was just a hunch, but one that fit with the scenario she had been presented with. The Pacifists were dust in the wind (for all intents and purposes, anyway), but they weren't the only Geth. They said so themselves. But if, as she suspected, Lorek was being held by the 'mainline' Geth, why?
That was the one part she couldn't figure out, and none of the potential answers she had come up with sounded good.
Outskirts of Jalnor, Lorek
February 28, 1974
Neva vas Alarei was the last quarian in the galaxy.
Well, maybe not the last. But there couldn't be more than a few hundred, and even that was being generous. A slave in the Hegemony did not learn about the wider galaxy, not more than her Masters allowed her to, but she heard enough. The fleet forced from the known galaxy, with all the quarians they could find thrown back into it.
Not her.
Her Master was jealously protective of his property. He knew he was not able to manage the farm without her assistance, and faked her death when the Hegemony came for her. So now she hid from view, in the main building of her Master's estate. She still worked, but in the shadows. And despite the exile of her people from the galactic community, for Neva, very little changed.
Or rather, very little had changed until today. Neva was busy repairing the estate's agricultural maintenance VI, as she usually was. Her Master would not purchase a newer one, and she knew better than to make a suggestion. She was therefore not paying attention when they came, and only looked out the window when she heard the screams of the others in the building.
The Hegemony's slave conditioning process was effective. Much of Neva's willpower was gone despite her enslavement having only lasted a decade, a relatively short amount of time compared to the others. But when she saw the ships in the sky, and instantly recognized their profile from the vids she recalled watching as a child, that conditioning temporarily broke.
She screamed. Louder and longer than she ever had. She owed her continued to survival to the fact that others were screaming as well and she remained unnoticed.
After a moment, Neva gathered her senses and made for the storage room at the bottom of the estate. She had, over the course of a year, built a small room in the interior of one of its walls, keeping it undetectable in the way only a quarian mechanic could. As chaos continued to rein over her Master's domicile, she managed to elude the guards and somehow found herself in her safe room. Once she had sealed the door to both the storage room and her own refuge, she forced herself to calm down and assess the situation.
Geth. The Geth were here.
Why? Did it have something to do with the quarians being exiled? Were the Geth using the opportunity to conquer the galaxy? No, that didn't make any sense, there weren't enough of them and they knew it. Why were they attacking a Batarian world? Why not the Citadel? No, that didn't make sense because...
As Neva continued to try to parse the reason for the Geth's arrival, she was unaware that a large contingent of ground forces had been sent to her Master's estate. The Geth, upon detecting and confirming the life signs of her suit within the building, immediately declared extracting her to be a top priority. They would not waste this opportunity.
Nuroktar System, The Howling Darkness [Triangulum II Galaxy]
October 5, 1996
The Alar were alone.
Of course, their Aware kin would disagree with that statement. Alyarae, the beautiful blue-green moon that was the only true Natural world, harbored many sapient species. Sapience, or their untranslatable term for it, had been a gift given by the Alar to their brethren in nature. For millennia the Alar felt the Link of Nature only amongst themselves as they sought to perfect their world. Their evolution colored their psychology in such a way that they "refused" to achieve spaceflight until Alyarae was as beautiful, as Natural, as it could be.
It took a long time. Pollution was not, climate change was not. The Link would scream in pain should the land be poisoned. And so, 25,000 solar years after the Birth of the Link, the Nature of Elnara escaped gravity and saw the creation the Gods of Nature had bestowed upon them.
It was empty.
Not truly "empty", per se. The Darkness, that strange material that forced them to refine their ship designs thousands of times, was everywhere. In time, it would be harnessed as fuel. There were planets, and stars, but no life. The systems they saw were ancient, dying. The Red Giant that dominated their sky was as their researchers said, gaseous and devoid of life. It was as if they had arrived after the Gods of Nature had already cleansed the universe clean.
At first, the Link felt pain. But as their knowledge of the galaxies surrounding them grew, it felt resentment. Anger. Close to them was a truly enormous collection of stars. The Spiral. The stars were young, and so the planets must be too. Why were they not there? Why had they been left in this empty void, this Howling Darkness?
Time passed. Atheism won out over the old gods, but the devotion to Nature remained. It had to. The Link demanded it.
And so the Alar made new wonders. The animals of their world were given Awareness, and joined them in Naturalizing the galaxy. Moons were surrounded by enormous terraforming domes. Dead worlds breathed with new life.
Still they were alone. The Link longed for connection to life beyond Alyarae that was not birthed from it. The desire was buried, deep within the layers of consciousness, as the Naturalization of the Howling Darkness continued. They were not happy, not truly. But they were content with the endless work they made for themselves.
In the 14th Cycle of the 2nd Natural Age, 147,000 years after the Birth of the Link, a communications station on the edge of the Nuroktar system flashed an emergency warning. Thousands of unknown ships had entered the system. They were appearing one after the other, efficiently and in perfect formation.
The lone Surk manning the station wasted no time in reaching out to the Link. Years later, the Alar would appreciate the significance of an Aware bringing them the news that they had waited eons for. The longing within them, the wish they had buried for millennia, came rushing to the surface all at once. For one brilliant moment, every Alar and Aware within the Link would feel complete happiness.
Then confusion quickly took over. The Link had reached out to the ships, and there was...something, but it was not living. Or was it? It was complex, thinking, but its mental touch felt cold to the Link. Mechanical.
Finally, confusion and joy both melded together as a singular message echoed through almost every living being in the Howling Darkness.
"We are Pacifist Geth. Query: Identification?"