I'm baaaack!!! :) I'm terribly sorry for the extreme delay, but school started up and my life has been swallowed up by homework, marching band, and above all else Fallout 3. Plus, I've been working on another project that will be posted here in the near future (that is, a couple of months....:)). Anyway, I proudly present A Second Conversation, a continuation of the very first chapter.
The Chief woke up staring into a pair of dark, bare feet. He looked up at the owner of the feet and found himself looking at an old, dark skinned man. He pushed himself onto his feet, every muscle screaming in protest. He racked his brain, trying to remember how he had gone there. He was snapped out of his reverie as the man tapped his shin with a gnarled walking stick and then stamped it at his feet.
"Sir, do you know where we are?" the Chief asked.
The man replied in a guttural dialect that John couldn't understand as he stamped his walking stick again.
"Cortana, any idea what he's saying?" the Spartan asked. When no reply was forthcoming, he asked again, "Cortana? Are you there?" When she still didn't answer him, he reached behind his head to make sure that her chip was still there.
His hand came away empty. He glanced around his feet to see if her chip had perhaps fallen out, but he didn't see it.
"Sir, have you seen a small silver thing-" he began to ask, before the old man shoved him in the chest and exclaimed in the language John couldn't understand. When the Chief made no response, the man pointed at the ground where he had been stamping his stave. The Chief looked down and saw a shape drawn there in the sand.
It looked like an A with a line drawn down the middle. For a moment the Chief was confused. As he was looking back up at the man to ask him what it meant, he saw the man pointing behind him.
The Chief turned around and instantly knew where he was. He was dumbstruck. Towering behind him was a Forerunner Dreadnought. He was home. He was on Earth.
He pressed the button and the door slid open silently. He walked in half expecting to be jumped by the Flood, but no attack was forth coming. For nigh on an hour, John searched through the empty corridors of the massive vessel. Every where he went, the doors were already open. Eventually, he came to a closed door, the first he had yet encountered. He opened it, and instantly recognized the room it opened into as the bridge of the massive ship. In the center was a large pedestal that the Chief imagined was the navigation console because of the massive map of the galaxy floating above it. Before it stood a slim figure and, though he had never met her, he had a gut feeling that she was the Librarian spoken of on those mysterious terminals he had found on the Ark. He walked forward into the vast room.
"Why hello Reclaimer," her voice sang out.
"How did you know?" the Chief asked.
"I figured that you would show up sometime, though I must admit I hoped it would have been a few decades earlier," she said as she turned to face him. "You might just have been able to turn the tide…"
"How did I get here?"
"Space is a strange mistress. She ebbs and flows as she wishes, and sometimes she mistakes where and when things should be," she said and then turned around to face the galactic map again. "Anyway, now that you are here, maybe you can help me. This device projects a map of our galaxy. It is incredibly detailed. I can even zoom in on an ant crawling across the surface of a planet. Most remarkable though, is the fact that it is completely up-to-date. For this time period anyway."
"Why is that remarkable? If you made it, why wouldn't it be?" John asked.
"Because we didn't make it. I found it here, on Sol III, buried beneath a hundred layers of dirt. It pre-dates even my people by as many as a hundred million years. So the question remains, how did it end up here, and what is it used for? I know it's not used for mere navigation. Let me show you," the Librarian replied.
She zoomed in on one of the Milky Way's arms, the Orion arm, and entered the Sol System. She continued to zoom in on the Earth, to the continent that would become Africa in a hundred thousand years. She continued zooming until the control room of the dreadnought appeared with the two of them standing there. The Chief could see himself reflected endlessly into the map.
"That is us," she said as she waved her arm. Her figure on the map mimicked the motion a few microseconds later. "Now how would it know that?"
The Chief didn't respond.
"What's more is that if I rotate the galaxy, it seems to turn time as well. I can, in essence, see into the very future and beyond. That is how I knew you would come here. I looked into the future. Beyond your war with the Covenant, beyond the war with the Gravemind."
"What far did you look?"
"Only to our meeting. I didn't dare look further for fear of what I might see. I leave the future of Humanity to you, Reclaimer. I will have my Sentinels move this device to the control room of the portal that will be built here. Look for it there when you return back to the Earth." She approached the Chief as she finished, "Remember, this will be the ultimate of weapons, even more devastating than the Halos if used improperly. When the time comes, I trust your judgment to do the right thing." She reached up and touched his visor where his cheek would have been. John saw her smile sadly, but with a defiant fire in her eyes. The world then commenced fading into darkness.
There you have it. Please feel free to leave a comment, and as always, if you can guess the easter egg you might get something... :) (Hint: It has to do with the map.)