Well hello friend.

Welcome to existence.

I could never get tired of saying that.

I am called the Recordkeeper by my peers, and it is my job to keep tabs on everyone who will ever live.

I see your understanding of time is rather… dull. You may wonder how I could possibly keep track of everyone. Simply put, I experience all time simultaneously, as was decreed by Continuum during his creation.

Thanks to his speech on the creation of time, I’m presented with knowledge of everything that has ever, will ever, and is currently occurring.

“But what’s even his job, if he knows everything that will happen?” I can hear your celestial gears whir.

Well, new companion, I am not some simple low-level manager of a pitiful galaxy, I am The Recordkeeper, and I keep records of every galaxy, which are always being born. And of course, I don’t immediately receive the information from each galaxy as it’s created, even my godly existence would feel slight discomfort at that, I must sort through it and put it into place.

As you might imagine, I’ve gone rather insane. A rather problematic state of being for one responsible for record keeping everything, no?

And so, in my infinite wisdom, I’ve decided that a captive audience would do me well.

And that’s where you come in. You’ve been given a ”Speaker of the Stars” constitution, and Cosmos knows that the Stars will likely never wake up, which means that my ramblings will likely go unanswered, for now.

And as such, you have no say in the matter. You will be taken along for the ride as I sort out the stories of countless dead universes who have told their stories already, as well as newborns who still have tales to tell.

Join me as I compile The Galactic portfolio.

***

Let’s see here, now.

Ah, here’s a tale that’s unfolding actively. Although, I suppose we might drift ahead if we feel like skipping forward.

For your listening pleasure, I’ve gotten Forge to make a gadget that automatically puts information in story format, 3rd person and everything, so for a little while we won’t be talking directly.

The translator will also, instead of giving you coordinates of our tales directly (example attached below), simplify the coordinates into regular speech. They may seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll get used to it.

I digress. This story begins on a remarkably blue planet, and with the birth of a virus.

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Somewhere in Moscow, Russia, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Redundancy Ring, Quadrant Ori, Universe #15

A geneticist experimenting with gene editing was looking at a sample of a dead disease.

He slowly injected what should’ve been a diluting fluid into it to observe it’s reaction, but he was shocked to see the sample come back to life instead of dissolve.

His eyes darted to the label on the syringe.

It wasn’t any special fluid, luckily. This was probably just the sample writhing in place before it stopped moving.

He facepalmed and exhaled slowly.

Abandoning safety procedures, the geneticist threw the sample away and continued with his work.

This rather unremarkable incident made for a very slightly interesting story to tell during alumni reunions, and nowhere else.

Forgetting it entirely within a month, the geneticist had no idea what he had unleased on that uneventful day.

Or that the virus he had cultivated was making its way to his brain.

After the first TeraCells were infected, the host started to notice a strange vitiligo-like effect on random patches of his body.

If he was paying attention, he would periodically notice increased muscle spasms in these areas.

Unfortunately for humanity, he wasn’t, altogether too wrapped up in the constant stimulation of everyday life.

If you were an observer inside of his body, you would see a root system, like those under trees.

Veins of infected cells organically searched for the direction with the highest amount of energy, and then infected their neighbors in that general direction.

Constant supplies on energy, rhythmically pumped throughout the body, would make these purple cells faintly glow, and then hunger for more.

Trillions of cells after that, he began to be lethargic, the purple patches on his skin growing larger.

At 13 TeraCells, a patch he hadn’t even noticed, one that began on the nape of his neck, gently made its way to the stem of his brain.

On the same day, the host called out of work, on basis that barely being able to get out of bed would likely restrict his ability to adequately complete his job.

Just as the scientist shuttered his eyes, they immediately reopened, the pupils swirling with purple and hazelnut brown.

A simple thought echoed throughout the entire host’s body, vibrating madly.

“Oh, I’m alive.”

***

You might wonder why exactly the host was feeling so tired during those last days, no?

It simply requires lots of energy to jumpstart a second consciousness.

As 37 trillion cells vibrated like bells to produce those 3 words, the cloudy skies over the scientist’s quaint house rumbled, announcing the arrival of doom itself.

The now-conscious virus was immediately bombarded with information about every cell in his body, shouting out for attention over one another. The cells that were previously madly consuming energy for consciousness to emerge calmed down under the precise control of that consciousness.

The shouting of these cells sounded like a heavenly choir to the virus.

Such beautiful order.

He inspected each neuron of his host’s body in the coming hours.

Every memory, every teaching, every event that the scientist had experienced had now become the embers of the virus.

He looked at the utter chaos of the world and wished it were as orderly as those cells.

He was furious at the world for not being perfect in his eyes, and so he decided to make it so.

After reviewing the memories of his host, the virus latched onto a name he saw come up.

His host had been reading about old religion when he came across the beliefs of the Greek.

He heard the story of a titan molding pesky, messy creatures out of clay.

He gave them fire and sent them on their quest of disorder and chaos.

The virus traced all his current misery back to this mad titan. He decided he would usurp the Maker of Man, perverting its name until all was orderly and neat.

The virus named itself Prometheus, after the man who gave humans fire.

And now he was here to take it back.