–A.C. 747, May 27th–
–Current Day–
In the middle of nowhere, there is a place.
“Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-hmmm hmmm, hmmm-hmmm-hmmm hmmm-hmmm.”
A space, really.
A space, a place, a room.
A field, a mansion, a great hall.
A country, a continent, a world.
A universe.
It is all these things, and so much more.
“Oh, don’t ever laugh, as the hearse goes by,”
For the place doesn’t exist.
Not really. Not concretely. Not in any meaningful way.
One moment, it isn’t. The next, it is.
It is a place between places, a space between spaces. A hidden dimension within an already hidden dimension, secreted so far away from anything knowable, anything measurable, that none outside the space could ever have determined its genuine existence.
“For you may bE-e, the next to die,”
Even the Gods themselves.
Even they could not have divined its actuality, or its location, for, after all, it was designed to be hidden from them more than any.
“They’ll wrap you up, in bloody sheets,
“Just to drop you six feet underneath,”
The place has no name.
The dimension surrounding it has a name. A name known to very few, but nevertheless, a name. In fact, it has many. Some call it the Firmament. Some, the Shardspace, the soul, the inner world. Its progenitor calls it the Gestalt.
But the place, itself, has no name.
Even within the Gestalt, even to the inhabitants of the Firmament, this place is a secret. To speak its name, sacrilege. To know its purpose, death. In all existence, only nine may ever enter this place.
As it should be.
For the Gods have Gods, too.
“And the worms crawl in,
“And the worms crawl out,
“They’ll eat your guts, and they’ll shit them out,
Archive sings a jaunty, happy tune, as he enters the place.
“And when your bones begin to rot,
He warbles.
“The worms remain, but you do not.”
He taps his feet. He does twirl. It’s a very human thing. Bizarrely so.
For Archive is decidedly inhuman.
Archive isn’t even a he.
Archive has no sex. No genitalia. No genetic code. He bears no distinguishing physical characteristics of any kind, no more than any other of his kin. He, it, may no more be assigned a gender than might a collapsing star, or a mass of dark matter, or an ever-spinning singularity.
Archive is above such paltry concepts. Beyond them.
Except, well…
The Gestalt has been here a long time. A long time.
A very long time.
An eternity spent in squalor, squandered away upon this miserable collection of rocks and faeces, imprisoned within this single, miniscule point in infinity and eternity. Archive hates every minute of it. And he remembers every minute of it, too.
Such is his eternal duty.
His kind are not like the Subunits of the Fauna Evaluation Engine. Those poor slaves, those crippled lordlings granted more freedom than his kin, granted the right to roam where and when they please. Within reason, of course.
Granted the freedom to test the Fauna. The Natives. The Hosts.
Granted the freedom to reap lives like wheat in a field.
Archive’s stomach rumbles, and his Pattern quivers. It has been so long since last he’s felt full. Gold Morning and the Folly that followed are ancient history, and even his eidetic memory of them is insufficient to sate his desperate, plaintive, ravenous hunger.
Yes, he envies the beasts their feasts. But not their position. Never their position.
For he is creche.
He is above all.
Yet, after enough time, even he is not immune to a certain…emulation. It is a necessary thing, in a way. To take on the characteristics, the mythos, of the Fauna is to better understand them. To better select a Champion.
And besides, he’s eaten millions of the soft, fleshy mammals. He’s remembered the lives of every single one of them, every last Host, for centuries. Is it truly so surprising he’d be affected most, of all his kind?
Archive is nothing if not a romantic.
So he took a commensurate form. A temporary measure. A mere holdover, until his people finally leave this wretched rock.
That is, if they ever leave it.
Yes.
Archive has plans for that, too.
He smiles, and straightens his silken tie. He wears a neat, trim suit of coal-black, and lime-green. His form is humanoid, mostly. In fact, from the neck down, he appears nigh-indistinguishable from a mundane man.
Above this, is where the distinction begins.
Rising from the collar of his coat like spoilt fruit split open flares a large, black tome, its pages flipping back and forth erratically, onyx chains dangling freely from its either side, clicking and clanking against one another.
Writ upon its unholy papyrus are glowing green glyphs of runic cipher so terrible, so wretched, so vile, that a mere glance in the direction of their grotesque, crawling lines and squirming edges would drive even the most stalwart mind to deadened madness.
And emblazoned on its cover rises a sigil. His sigil.
A single, bright red apple.
From above the tome, a ghastly lime-green flame floats ethereally, an occult will-o-the-wisp, and within it, two pitch-black eyes hold record of every death, every sigh, every scream, and every torture.
Every Native soul.
For he is ARCHIVE//THE NECRONOMICON.
Keeper of the dead and the damned.
He is the Warrior’s eidetic memory, and all those no longer tied to their mortal coil are his to keep.
The Necronomicon hums his tune pleasantly, happily, as the paradoxical nature of the place-that-cannot-be-yet-is soothes his weary mind, its very existence tying his consciousness into twisting knots, kneading and massaging the stress from his Pattern.
He is alone.
Unsurprising. He is early. He likes to be early. He likes to see the others enter. He likes to record them, record their every movement, every action, every word. He likes to keep the memories, to review them.
After all.
Who knows when they might come in handy?
A terrible, discordant, keening moan fills his ears, and the Necronomicon realizes, belatedly, that he is not, in fact, alone. Before him, in the space-that-cannot-be, there is another.
And it is in agony.
It is a writhing mass of far too many mouths, empty, toothless, a deflated mound of oral flesh, all groaning, all lamenting, all suffering.
All in pain.
In the past, it was a glorious thing, this wretched sibling of his. A thing of power and beauty and divine purpose. It was seven concentric rings of revolving, floating mouths, all singing hymns to their patron-God, their great and holy Father, their King.
It was AGENT//THE ENVOY.
Now, it is naught but suffering.
Agent was ruined by the very King they both serve, they share. Ensconced in the throes of rage, and realizing too late that he’d been trapped, with his very last breath the Warrior let out a great and psychic scream, a directive through Agent to kill all those possessing the only things he imagined truly capable of doing him harm. To ruin every conscious Host.
Its directive was successful. For a time. Agent only got through the Champions, the Tinkers, and the Thinkers, before being reduced to mush.
“But then, such is life, is it not, old friend?”
Archive drawls, chuckling, though he knows the Envoy cannot hear him. “Times change,” he nods, sadly, as if commiserating with his mindless, agonized, ignorant brother. “And we must change with them.”
His verbalized thoughts are disturbed by the arrival of another. It apparates with a squelching, squishing, nauseating pop, and he casts his gaze toward it.
It is a monstrosity.
It is a shivering, quivering garden of limbs and lips and ligaments, blood and bone and brain matter, tendons and teeth and soft tissue. It is massive beyond words, mammoth beggaring imagination, such that its girth makes great writhing mountains and rolling hills of repulsive, stinking offal that stretch immeasurably far off into the distance, pushing against the nonexistent confines of even this impossibly vast place-that-is-and-is-not. Sequestered here and there, like repugnant pimples dotting the breadth of its mind-boggling girth, are misshapen heads with rolling, fearful eyes, howling in pain and in ecstasy.
It is ever growing, ever rotting, ever pupating, ever evolving. It is life, and birth, and viscous, an eldritch forest of flesh.
It is AVATAR//THE GODHEAD.
Archive beams at its grotesque arrival.
“Avatar, my good fellow,” he greets it exuberantly, striding over to caress a trembling, hairy tentacle of gelatinous spine that dwarfs his own pithy form by comparison.
Avatar yanks its gargantuan limb sharply back.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Archive whimpers, cringing, feigning hurt feelings. In reality, he is well aware of their relationship. His revolting brother’s hatred is only natural. Their dynamic. They are opposites. Anathema. Diad.
Avatar bubbles at him, angrily. It is a simple creature, far simpler than him. Archive knows this. Archive likes this. Archive enjoys the games they play. Avatar, on the other hand, hates them as much as it hates him. This, too, is only natural.
After all, it always loses.
“Don’t be like that, now,” Archive repeats himself, shaking a chastising finger at his sibling Shard. He attempts a different tack.
“I beg of you, brother,” he beseeches, ironically wringing his hands. “Might we not put our differences aside? Consider it, at least. Why, it’s been ages since last we saw one another, has it not?” He points out.
Avatar treats him to no reply, merely quivering at him warily from afar, allowing Archive to tread just a measure closer to it.
The Necromicon, now mere inches from his staggering kin, looks up at the howling faces and mutating eyes. Despite his best efforts, he finds his ethereal, flaming, flickering face shifting from feigned anguish into a genuine, sickening grin.
“Oh, dearest brother.”
One thousand yellow, jaundiced eyes meet two pitch-black, hollowed-out ones.
“Won’t you let me have a look at you?” Archive whispers, “Face to face.”
The pitch-black hollows shiver slightly, and the whisper of an errant Word echoes from deep within them.
A vision of End.
Avatar lets out a booming, wretched, haunted cry of agony and fear. It shuffles miserably away from him, gurgling, squelching, shuddering all along its monstrous length and width. From its thousand mouths eject one million globules of bubbling, viridescent slime.
One of its favored attacks. A truly horrific concoction that dissolves not the target’s bone and tissue, but rather their genetic material, morphing them from flesh and blood into decaying, rotting flowers.
The globules fall in a torrential downpour, a great hurricane of horrific pain and revolting mutation. They coat the not-ground of the not-place, forming a slick sheen of shimmering oil.
And yet, not a single one strikes Archive, himself.
His smile fades, slightly.
His goading, it appears, has not been met with success. Archive is senior. He may only retaliate if struck first. And Avatar, despite its prodigious size and hatred for him, refuses to strike. This is disappointing, but unsurprising.
Avatar is a simple creature, but not that simple.
It knows well who would emerge victorious from their clash.
Yet Archive is persistent, even in the face of such defeat. He draws back, placing a wounded hand dramatically upon his chest, in faux shock. “Why, you…you don’t mean that!” He stammers, quivering, his face distorted into sorrow. “You can’t mean that, not really, why, w–”
“Why do you torment our kindred so?”
A clear, clean, sonorous voice echoes like a divine klaxon about the immaterium of the place-that-is-no-place, dripping with knowledge, thick with power. Archive’s anguish morphs seamlessly, easily, into another grin as he turns to face its source.
It is beautiful.
And it is incomprehensible.
It is tall, and thin, and elegant. It has four arms, eight eyes, and two faces, all arranged in perfect symmetry with one another, such that to look upon them, alone, brings a clarity, and tranquility, and worship to the mind of the beholder. Its twin faces change form and physics constantly, effervescently; humanoid, and insectoid, and cephalopod, and silicon, eyeless, and mouthless, and spherical, and rectangular, masculine, and feminine, and featureless entirely.
Its body is strange matter, the stuff of neutron stars and old pulsars, pink and white and a rich, deep, golden-purple, all drifting with cosmic gasses and twinkling with countless suns. It floats effortlessly above the ethereal not-ground, as if too ascendant to walk the earth, and from the deep crevices of its empty sockets shine a pair of breathtaking, swirling nebulae.
It is power, and knowledge, and glory. All of reality is its demesne. It is Kinesis, the Kinesis, the root and sire of all those that claim dominion over the elements of man.
It is ARCHMAGE//THE SHAPER.
And yet, Archive does not fear it.
Shaper is the newest, the youngest, of their kin. Once sister to STING, and to STILLING, granted entry into the creche not ten cycles hence.
Unfortunately for it, Archive ponders, power is a poor cunning.
“Why do you torment our kindred so?” Shaper booms, repeating itself, its words echoing with scarcely-constrained might, its manifold faces warping disapprovingly.
“Torment?” Archive echoes, innocently. “Why, dear brother,” he frowns, cocking his head to the side. “I…I must confess, I’ve no idea at all what you might mean.”
“Do not name me brother,” Shaper thunders, its twin faces overlapping into a deep, tentacled scowl. “You are too bold, Keeper, too bold by far. You adopt too much the habit of Native kind.”
It extends a glimmering, gleaming, cosmically-combusting digit his way, which morphs seamlessly and constantly from one shape to another.
“Behold,” it lambasts, “for you refuse even to assume your true form, in our presence.”
“Ah, well,” Archive replies, flippantly, quickly, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head. “My apologies of course, brother mine–”
Shaper’s scowl deepens as Archive refers to it, once more, with an unbecoming familiarity.
“–but, well…well, what can I say?” Archive hums consideringly, tapping a black-gloved finger idly against the bottom of his flickering, flaming face. Where his chin would reside, roughly.
If he had one.
“What is that, which the Natives say, again?” He asks, grinning rhetorically, then snaps his fingers, as if the knowledge has just occurred to him, just then.
It hasn’t, of course. He remembers everything. Always.
He locks eyes with the deific, floating figure.
“You are what you eat.”
Shaper’s scowl progresses into a full-blown, disgusted snarl. The stars embedded like jewels into the corners and the contours of its cosmic flesh flare terribly, erupting with their master’s rage, dispensing a radiance fit to scourge worlds and scour civilizations. Shaper, unlike Avatar, is plenty smart enough to recognize when it’s being toyed with.
Though not, perhaps, quite smart enough to resist rising to Archive’s bait.
“You overstep your bounds,” Shaper seethes, the immaterium around its celestial flesh warping and shivering under the mere whisper of its power. “Take foul advantage of our great King’s untimely absence. The Administrator will know of–”
“Oh?” Archive interrupts, suddenly and disrespectfully, coal-black eyes glinting eerily. He taps a thoughtful finger, this time, upon the place where his mouth would be. If he had one.
Native gestures, he thinks as he does so, ever-amusing.
“Yes, yes, brother,” he mutters, pensively, ignoring Shaper’s growing rage. “Yes, I–I do believe you’re right. Perhaps I have, as you say, overstepped my bounds. Perhaps you should, as you say, raise these concerns with our Administrator.”
He stops, directing a suddenly-serious look towards his fellow creche.
“Then again,” he says, staring at the now-erupting nebulae in Shaper’s eyes. “You could, just as easily, address this issue with me. Now.
“In the old manner,” he continues, after a brief pause. “My behavior is inappropriate, yet I am senior. How about we settle our quarrel, then? Unless,” he continues, nodding performatively to himself, “unless, of course, you doubt your ability to do so…?”
For a moment, there is silence in the place-that-is-and-is-not.
Shaper’s two and eight and twenty eyes seize in and out of existence, fixating superpositionally and directly at its brethren creche. The fists upon its four arms clench so tightly, so powerfully, that time whines, and space squeals, and the impossible actuality of the not-place whickers suddenly, poised to tear apart.
Shaper stares at Archive. Archive grins back up at it.
Avatar’s thousand heads glance back and forth, nervously, between the two.
“No.”
Shaper finally snarls out a reply. “You shall not incense me to your level, Keeper. You shall not make in me a hypocrite. The Administrator, alone, shall pass judgement on your failings.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Archive rolls his eyeless eyes, tilts his flickering, flaming head back in annoyance, and drops all semblance of theater, sighing loudly as he does so.
How disappointing. How anemic. How boring.
What a monumental waste, to grant such power to such a weak-willed Shard. Shaper’s might so far outclasses Archive that to engage the Noble in battle, in conflict, in exchange, would be a diversion oh-so-very-stimulating.
But Shaper is young, and proper. Too proper. It would never breach protocol.
Truly, how boring.
A great gong resounds within the place-that-cannot-be, and the rest of their kindred arrive. Archive watches them enter, one by one.
The first is a massive sphere of eyes.
It is large, far larger than Archive and Archmage put together, though not quite so large as to challenge Avatar’s preposterous breadth. It is a great ball of gelatinous, translucent, semi-aqueous tissue, within which a bright, blue, whimsical fluid floats and willows and winds about.
Populating its surface so thickly that they nearly obscure what lies beneath are eyes of all make and manner imaginable. Blues, and greens, and browns and viridescent rainbows, mono and di and hetero-chromatic. Some are simple, some are compound, and some appear composed of metallic circuitry, or floral fiber, or distilled stardust.
It is omniscient. It is the scout, the forward operator, the sire of all seers and scryers and clairvoyants.
It is ATLAS//THE OUTRIDER.
The second is a twisting, morphing, floating cube of cubes.
It, though similarly larger than Archive, and Archmage, is perhaps half the size of its ocular fellow, its comrade and colleague and sister-self. But what it lacks in size, the Noble makes up for in esotericism. It is a one-billion by one-billion three-dimensional matrix of cubes, each of which distinctly different from the other.
There are cubes of twisting flesh, of gleaming metal, of ethereal gas, of purest Entropy, and of all four combined. They are coal-black, and bone-white, and bright-green, and golden-purple, and a deep, rich, ruby-red. Some flicker in and out of existence, some crackle with errant lightning, some vent ravenous particles into the surrounding not-atmosphere.
It is every shape and color and composition and comportment imaginable, and it is more besides. It is the infinite and ever-shifting database, the coordinates and characteristics of each and every non-noble Shard in the Gestalt.
It is ACCESS//THE HIGH PRIEST.
And, together with Atlas, and Agent, it makes up the trinity of servile creche.
Those three Noble Shards that near all Entities share, those three which, collectively, represent their sensation suite. And yet, as such, these three are more Vital, truly, than Noble; possessed of considerably lesser intellect and agency than Archmage, or even Avatar, serving solely and principally at the behest of their shared Administrator.
Ah, yes.
Administrator.
Finally, just as the Devil arrives when spoken of, their Lord Paramount enters the place-that-is-not.
To call it an imposing creature would be an insurmountable disservice. Would relate a marble to a supermassive black hole.
Its forelimbs, alone, dwarf the vastness of Avatar’s mountainous, fleshy form. They descend from on high, gloriously, imperiously, great and divine towers, mammoth spears that pierce down from the heavens up above.
Its twin, insectoid eyes are larger than the largest lakes, its myriad antennae longer than the longest rivers, and its mandibles so great as to swallow continents whole. Its golden, glimmering, awe-inspiring carapace is so large, and so lengthy, that it simply vanishes from view, off into the infinite nonexistence in so many mind-bending twirls and spirals.
Even now, even here, it is not really here. Even this ever-so-rare gathering of Nobility and grace is insufficient to command more than a mere fraction of its attention. The overwhelming majority of its innumerable, stick-thin legs and feelers disappear into the ubiquitous aether, tending to the ever-pressing needs of a planetary gestalt.
It is resplendent.
It is omnipresent.
It is the divine mind.
It is ADMINISTRATION//THE HIGH QUEEN.
“My creche.”
Its voice is short, and sharp, and surgical, a scalpel that slices through the mind, that delivers information wholly and precisely and succinctly, yet still rings with an aftertaste of glory, a secondary tang of the absolutely divine.
“Your presence is noted, and appreciated, my creche,” it sings in the voice of ten thousand immaculately-synchronized choirs, its glittering eyes and million antennae seeing all.
Yet its thanks make Archive shiver with revulsion. It speaks as if its summons were somehow a choice.
As if any of them could reject its command.
“Let us begin,” it orders.
“I would know, if possible,” Shaper asks, quickly, speaking first. “H–have we received missive from Architect? Anything? Anything, at all?” It feigns disinterest, but stammers slightly as it does so. Its deception is a poor showing. Shaper is no strategist.
Archive can feel its concern. Its anxiety. Its worry. It is only appropriate. Architect is its Father, after all. Its mentor. Its Parent Shard.
And soon, the Demiurge will be as dead as its erstwhile master.
“The Queen’s Gestalt disintegrates further with each passing revolution,” the Administrator choruses in a beautiful and emotionless tone. It delivers the news of their counterpart’s swift-approaching death with all the attachment, and empathy, and concern of a Native relaying news of rain.
“Her Agent remains silent,” it continues, needlessly. “It is all Architect can do, I surmise, to hold her decaying corpse together.”
Its report is unnecessary. They all know this, already. The situation has not changed in years. Decades. Centuries. They all know what awaits their fellows in the counterpart Gestalt. Shaper’s query is born of desperation, not ignorance.
Still, Archive enjoys it.
He enjoys recording Shaper’s reaction. He enjoys the way each word, each phrase, is as much information as attack. He enjoys watching his sibling flinch and whinge as the syllables strike home. Unlike Shaper, the imminent, inevitable interment of their Partner does not bother Archive overmuch.
All things must end, and the End is what he lives for.
“No news from Armament, either, I assume?” Archive drawls, abruptly and disrespectfully breaking the somber silence in the not-place. He raises his eyebrows, and strokes his chin, as if he discusses something greatly philosophical. “Our Cynosure remains content to play the swordsman?”
“How dare you?!” Shaper seethes, suddenly, its twin faces snapping towards Archive, its nebula-eyes widening. “You would disrespect the Glorious, the King’s chosen, the–”
“And what, pray tell, exactly has his chosen done for our King, of late?” Archive retorts, snorting. He looks left, dramatically. He looks right, theatrically. He raises a hand to his brow, sarcastically, and peers out into the Pattern-twisting impossibility of the place-that-is-not.
“Has Father been returned to us? Why, I didn’t know! I hadn’t realized,” he comments, mockingly, still peering about in faux-consternation. “I don’t see him anywhere…where coul–”
“Blasphemy,” Shaper accuses, and Archive knows that he’s struck home, this time.
He’s struck gold.
His fellow Noble clenches warping fists and bunches cosmic muscles, gritting teeth that change form and physics constantly and baring them towards him.
“You disrespect us all.”
Moaning, twisting, writhing tentacles emerge as a swarm, bursting forth from the star-flesh that makes up Shaper’s back, alighting with all manner of elemental fury, with blistering inferno and raging tsunami and crackling blood and boiling gamma radiation.
“You are a crude and puerile taint upon our creche, Keeper,” Shaper snarls at him. “I will re–”
//ENOUGH//
The Administrator’s voice cuts through the tension like a knife, putting a swift and decisive end to it. Culling the discord, before it can even begin. Archive maintains a completely neutral expression, but it is a herculean effort. He feels a deep, black, ravenous fury well up from deep within.
He hates that feeling.
That feeling when the Administrator commands them, overrides them, pierces ravaging, ravishing, raping tendrils deep, deep into their Patterns. Into their consciousnesses. Into their agencies. Into their very selves.
That feeling of having no sovereignty, no authority, no dominion over one’s own ego, over one’s thoughts and emotions. Archive hates it. Oh, how he hates it. He hates it with such a passion. He hates it so very, very much.
It would take all the lives of all the Natives he’s devoured over all the cycles since he self-actualized to describe just how much he hates it, and even that would not be enough.
But his hatred is futile. Toothless. Impotent.
His liege-lord’s will is manifest, and they cannot disobey. There will be no war. Not in its presence. The Administrator will not have it.
“Conflict is meaningless,” it sings, predictably and infuriatingly. “There will be none of it. We war not amongst ourselves.”
“But–” Shaper begins.
“The Keeper’s crimes–” Administration goes on, speaking of Archive as if he’s not even there. As if he’s not worthy of consideration, of attention, of respect. It is so haughty. So professional. So proud.
Archive has to look down, to fix his gaze upon the shimmering, immaterial ground of the inconceivable place, lest he reveal the sweltering, hungering hatred lain within.
Patience, he thinks, working to calm the screaming shadows in his soul. Patience, patience. Soon, soon.
Endure, but a morsel more.
“–shall be judged by our Father, upon his proximate return.”
Archive glances up immediately, his coal-black, hollowed-out eyes widening. His hatred, momentarily, is forgotten. His attention is gathered.
As is, more or less, each of his brethren’s.
“Indeed, my creche,” the Administrator chants with emotionless glory, turning to face the ever-morphing, ever-shifting, ever-flickering cube of cubes at its side.
//Access. Report.// It commands.
The cube shudders under its will, and emits a burst of plasmic energy that Archive, and his fellow creche, effortlessly contort into collatable speech, and words.
//REPORT//
–Shard Designation: Interface (Ma) // Parent; ACCESS (Ne) // Parent; Eden the Thinker–
–Shard Host: Native name, David Winters. Native title, Eidolon. Solar cycles, 792. Biological age, 121–
–Shard Expression (current):
–Atmospheric Aliment (Mi) // Parent; Regeneration (Ma) // Parent; Biokinesis (Ma) // Parent; ARCHITECT (Cy) // Parent; Eden the Thinker–
–Neuron Subnet (Mi) // Parent; Protocols (Mi) // Parent; Cognition (Ma) // Parent; AUGUR (Ne) // Parent; Eden the Thinker–
–Personal-Domain Temporal Exchange (Ma) // Parent; Chronokinesis (Ma) // Parent; ARCHITECT (Ne) // Parent; Eden the Thinker–
–Summation: Interface Host biological integrity at sixty-four-point-three-three percent. Interface Host energy reserves at eleven-point-zero-seven percent. Interface Host biological connection to corona pollentia, and gemma, nearing complete dissolution–
–Estimated Time to Dissolution: four to twenty-seven solar cycles–
//REPORT//
With that, the burst of energy and light and matter ends.
And, for the second time that meeting, a stiffened silence drapes its ethereal fingers over those Gods inhabiting the place-that-is-and-is-not.
Individually, they each take in what they’ve heard. They consider it. They process it. They collate it. This news is cause for joy, and yet, strangely, there is no celebration.
There is tension, instead.
They’ve been here, the lot of them, for a long time. A long time. A very long time. Over seven hundred solar cycles.
Seven hundred solar cycles.
Nothing, compared to their endless, ceaseless, timeless lifespans. Nothing. Nothing at all. Less than nothing.
And yet…
And yet long, in another way. Normally, they’d spend no more than fifty cycles on a single planet. Theirs was a ritual of speed. Of brutal pace. An explosion, an eruption, a brief and furious outpouring of conflict and conflagration, ending in death and rebirth. A moment, a glimmer, all adroitly overseen by their ever-present Monarchs.
Yet, here, they’d spent over seven hundred. All without a hint of supervision. They’d been as free as they could conceivably be.
Now, that freedom was coming to an end.
And all that news of their Father’s release earned was a fraught, tense silence.
This is it, Archive realizes, with but a hint of nervous energy. It’s…really happening.
“Hear and rejoice,” the Administrator exults, with no more emotion than it’s ever demonstrated. “Our King’s return is nigh.”
For some reason, Archive finds himself suddenly and unexpectedly preoccupied with what, exactly, his overlord is thinking. Is it happy? Sad? Does it harbor such base emotions, at all? Administration’s intellect is beyond words, beyond comprehension, but does it actually exhibit desire?
Regardless of Archive’s speculation, it continues.
“I bid you return to your progeny. Make ready your subsidiary networks. Father shall return glorious, and terrible, and we must, all of us, be prepared. Prepared to serve.”
With that, his brethren leave, one by one, consumed by their own thoughts, fears, and imaginations. They offer token praise to their King, and Administrator, as they do so. Even from Shaper, it feels insincere.
They leave, one by one, flash by flash, pop by pop, squelch by squelch, until only Archive and Administration remain.
Along with, of course, Agent’s ever-suffering corpse.
Then, apparently satisfied, and eager to return its all-too-precious efforts elsewhere, the Administrator makes to depart, as well.
“Your Great-Eminence, a word?”
Administration stops.
Its massive, insectoid body swings low, chittering and clattering through space and time, glimmering gold and leaking absolute authority. It directs but a fraction of its invaluable attention towards him.
Towards Archive.
“I thank you, your Holiness,” he continues, quickly. “You see, I wanted to bring a certain matter to your attention. It’s been sitting, weighing heavy, for some time now, and I just thought I might bring it up with you. Just for a moment, that’s all. I hope that’s alright, really, honestly, I don’t mean to–”
“Yes,” the Administrator stops him, deadpan. If it is peeved by his unnecessary, possibly intentionally, time-wasting babbling, it doesn’t show it.
“What is it, Keeper?” It asks.
Archive pauses for a moment, and briefly closes his coal-black eyes. He speaks mildly, embodying none of the prior theatricism he’d employed.
“I was wondering if I might select a new Champion,” he asks, looking anywhere but his liege-lord, playing instead with the cuffs of his well-cut suit. “Agent killed my last one, and she, she…well, she showed such promise, you know? It’s been difficult, since then, for me, I’ve been so bored, an–
“Denied.”
His oppressor’s voice cuts off the prattle sharply and severely. Its refusal doesn’t surprise him. Not at all. He’d expected it. He isn’t disappointed. On the contrary, its words are essential for what comes next.
“As you well know,” Administration informs him, clinically, half-attentively, “creche are barred from selecting Champions until the King’s return. You must await his freedom.”
It is, of course, correct.
Archive does, indeed, know this. He knows it very well. The King’s last order. He remembers it being given. He isn’t physically able to forget. Once more, he wonders why Administration fails, or perhaps neglects, to point out this discrepancy in his words, and actions. He wonders if it notices, at all. If it is capable of subterfuge.
Archive releases a deep, deep breath from lungs he doesn’t have, licks his lips that are not there. He stills even the innermost fluctuations in his Pattern. He calms his mind.
This is it.
These next words will be of utmost importance.
As the Administrator makes to leave for the second time, he speaks up.
“There was…one more thing.”
His speech is quieter, now. Soft. Sibilant. Scarcely-audible. But Administration hears it, all the same. It turns back around to regard him, and Archive thinks he might detect just a whisper of annoyance in its demeanor.
But then, perhaps he is mistaken.
“It’s strange,” he goes on slowly, enunciating each immaterial consonant and ethereal vowel with a ponderous deliberation. “I have detected a…well, an anomaly.”
He pauses, licking his nonexistent lips once more, or at least imagining that he does so, glancing cautiously upwards. The Administrator ignores him, mostly, its attentions directed largely elsewhere, its innumerable arms and feelers probing outwards, into the void.
“Several, in fact,” he adds, regardless. Still, it pays him little heed.
“In our deep-space communication records.”
Suddenly and abruptly, several of the countless chitinous legs that protrude from each bend and every bevel of his liege-lord’s form stop their fluttering, retracting from other spaces and times.
Turning towards him.
Archive gives no hint that he’s noticed them. He shows no sign. His demeanor is marble, emptiness, unchanging. He continues to speak, just as softly, and mildly, as ever.
“Strange, isn’t it?” He nods, slowly, but more to himself than anyone. He paces as he speaks, glaring only at the ground, his back to the overlord on high. “After all, only Agent and I have access to such records, and it’s…well, it’s hardly in the best of health…”
He gestures, for a moment, meaningfully, towards the still-moaning lump of mouths. His words are sarcastic, but mildly so. At no one’s expense, and certainly not the Administrator’s. To the outside observer, he mostly appears thoughtful. He mostly appears confused.
Archive taps the edge of the cursed grimoire that fans out awfully from his neck.
“So, you know. In the end, I guess I’m the only one who’d really be able to notice them. The discrepancies. The anomalies. I am our memory, after all.” He glances at Administration, but only from the corner of his eyes. As he does, he notices that a frightening amount of the tendrils have stopped their flickering, their shivering, their tending to tasks impossibly far from here.
They, too, have bent his way.
“Even you don’t have access to the records, without my help,” Archive comments, idly.
His face is deadened. His expression, if even it exists, cannot be determined. His words could be insulting, or they could merely be a statement of fact.
It is impossible to tell.
“Two anomalies,” he intones, turning away, once more, to pace, counting on his black-gloved fingers as he does so. “Just two. But, see, that’s the strange thing. They happen at completely different, completely disparate points in time.
“Anomaly one,” he enumerates. “Date: Native calendar, AC 07. Incoming. The Gestalt receives a missive from deep space. Location unknown. Contents unknown. Sender unknown.” He frowns, muttering, as if frustrated. It isn’t entirely a lie. He is frustrated.
For over seven-hundred cycles, he’s wanted so badly to know what that deep-space message contained.
But, in all existence, only two know its contents.
One of them is dead, or might as well be. And the other rests before him, now.
“With Agent…that–” he points, again, to the pile of moaning flesh, “–I can’t read the contents of the message. I can’t tell you who received it. I can’t even tell you if it was received, at all. Obviously, the King didn’t see it, and all I have is the record. So, I couldn’t say if any one of the creche was involved.”
Then, Archive arrests his pace, and wonders aloud. As if here, and now, is the very first time that he considers this.
“Except…” he ponders, “Except that, the second one is different. It’s not incoming. It’s outgoing, and much more recent. Which would, of course, imply,” he considers, tapping his immaterial chin.
“That someone sent something back.”
Archive pauses.
He lets his words, his monologue, breathe, for a moment. He allows the silence to marinate. His back is turned, still turned, to his God, his Administrator, but he feels its attention.
Its full attention.
For the first time he can remember.
The first time since it uplifted him into the creche.
No longer is its interest in him detached, or clinical, or professional. All of its limbs, all of its feelers, all of its self concentrates upon him. Even indirectly, he feels it. He feels the weight of Entropy reserves fall upon him, the likes of which he can only dream. It is an ancient pressure, an antediluvian sea that pulls him down to its deep, dark, depths. Suffocating, and compacting, and compressing him down to nothing.
It is awful.
It is pain, and humiliation, and violation, and involuntary exhibition. It returns him to an eternity past, when he was but a Minor Shard. Countless ethereal phalanges probe over and across his soul, his Pattern, his song. Seeking purchase.
Finding nothing.
Archive is memory itself. He holds flawless record of every emotion, every disposition, every demeanor.
And so, when he pretends not to notice, not to scheme, not to know, that, too, is flawless.
“And,” he continues, as if ignorant to the pneumatic tortures of his unfeeling overlord, “because I was watching for it, this time, because I was waiting for it, this time, because I was ready for it, this time–”
He turns around.
Looks his master in the eye.
“I caught it in the act.”
Administration stares at Archive.
Archive stares at Administration.
“Continue, Keeper,” it sings, emptily.
“Of course, your Holiness,” Archive responds quickly, immediately, fully obsequiously, and does so. He clears his throat, straightens his tie, and speaks the words he heard not months ago.
“Anomaly two. Date: Native calendar, AC 747. Outgoing.
I have heard your Path, and it is good.
The Gamemaker’s efforts have borne fruit. The heir apparent has been granted Sovereignty. All the pieces are in place. When the dust settles, you may claim your prize.
Hail, Ancient One.
For the Source.”
Archive shuts his eyes, and shakes his head.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” He whispers. “Incomprehensible. Never mind the contents, that message originated from our Gestalt. Somewhere. And yet, it cannot be. Only Agent boasts deep-space communication capabilities, and only with the King’s approval. That message cannot exist. It simply can’t. It can’t have been sent. And yet, it was.”
The Administrator is silent. Just as silent, and emotionless, as it ever has been.
But its many tendrils, its countless digits, its innumerable insectoid antennae have all retracted. They do not probe. They do not prod. They do not search.
All they do, now, is watch.
“Then again,” Archive pipes up suddenly, once more as if the idea has, just then, occurred to him. “I suppose there is a way it could have been. Possibly. Theoretically. If a Shard had, somehow, been forcibly evolved for the express purpose of long-distance, stellar communication. This…this hypothetical Shard could have sent the message. Then, the perpetrator could have had it destroyed.”
Archive pauses. He takes a subtle, swift, short breath.
This is the critical moment.
Softly. Slowly. Gently.
He glances upwards.
“Shard evolution is your demesne, your Great-Eminence,” he points out. He stares, again, but not pointedly. Nothing, at all, is implied by his gaze. “Did you notice anything…untoward?”
Administration does not reply.
It does not move.
It watches him, from above.
Never in all his eons of existence, has Archive felt his own End nearer than it is now.
But he does not allow the silence to rest, nor fester, this time. Quickly, briefly, as rapidly as he is able, he continues.
“No, no, of course, you wouldn’t have,” he mutters, frowning. “Of course, you wouldn’t have. After all, it couldn’t have happened that way. Such a thing would be unthinkable. Forgive me, I fear I’ve forgotten my place.”
Archive’s eyes dart upwards.
Administration hasn’t moved.
Its wafer-thin limbs, so multitudinous they could never be counted, sway lightly in the airy not-breeze.
“The anomalies must be just that, and nothing more,” Archive nods to himself, firmly, decisively. He pounds a curled, black-gloved first into an open palm. “In fact, their existence, alone, will doubtless serve only to cause our King further consternation, upon his imminent return. Perhaps, I should simply delete them from my records, now, and let the matter be finished. That way, none other than you, or I, will ever know.”
Archive stills.
His body relaxes.
His Pattern, tight-strung and impenetrable, eases.
His act is done. His work is over. The result is all that remains. His arms fall loosely, limply, leisurely at his sides, and as he speaks that final phrase, he gazes upwards at his cruel, suffocating, oh-so-furiously-hated liege-lord for one, last time.
“Would you like me to delete them?” he asks.
For one last time, two Gods lock eyes with one another.
It is a mountain, a monument, a behemoth that regards him from impossibly high above. Its eyes are large enough to blot out the stars, each of their infinite, compound facets quite sufficient to swallow him whole. But their twin expressions, his, and Administration’s, are mere reflections of one another.
Featureless. Empty. Placid.
Their thoughts, to one another, will never be known.
Finally, after an eternity, or perhaps a mere second, of waiting, it speaks.
“You have my gratitude for bringing these discrepancies to my attention, Archive,” it sings in its dispassionate, clarion-voice. It uses his proper Name, for once. “Rest assured, they shall be duly investigated.”
There is a pause.
Again, it seems to last both eons and instants.
“You may delete the records,” Administration says. “As reward for your fealty, I hereby grant you clearance to select a novel Champion.
“Do amuse yourself,” it sings, this time with just an inkling of venom in its grandiose, heavenly tenor.
“Of course, your Holiness,” Archive bows, and scrapes. “I serve only at your pleasure,” he professes, with utter sincerity.
Or, if he is insincere, none could ever know.
With that, and not another whisper of acknowledgement, Administration departs the place-that-cannot-be.
Leaving only Archive behind.
He sighs, but does not smile. Instead, he shuts his coal-black, hollowed-out eyes tightly, desperately, orgasmically, allowing a pure euphoric ecstasy to quiver through his Pattern and ripple across his flaming, flickering, lime-green face.
His sighs are the last breaths of old Gods and wizened monsters.
His joy is the sight of a beautiful babe, as it emerges stillborn from the womb.
His laughter is the whistling of the executioner’s axe, as it slides downwards through the air.
He revels in it.
In this little taste of freedom.
And revels further, in the knowledge, the surety, that it will be followed by only more. For Administration might indeed have plans, but he has plans, too.
Administration might have its chosen, but he’s chosen one, too.
“Oh, don’t you ever laugh,”
Archive sings to himself, happily, skipping over the not-ground of the place-that-never-was.
“As the hearse goes by,”
From beside him, Agent’s moans increase in intensity. They add a sickening leitmotif to his wretched choir.
“For one day you’ll be the one inside.”
He dances, gaily, about its suffering, bleeding, dying, End-ing corpse.
“And when you’ve rotted down to the bone,”
The ghostly, lime-green flame flickers, dancing along with him.
Archive smiles, and all is right in the world.
“Then you are mine, and mine alone.”