Oblivion Waits, Infinite

Prologue:

After the age of man has faded the sentinels of their time remain dormant across the stars, giant titans of unimaginable power waiting dead in planetary sarcophagi, pillars of might and destruction, idols of their blinded folly. The war machines rot against the procession of time, locked away in orbital tombs and interstellar mausoleums for aeons. Remnants of intelligence struggle scattered across the galaxy, roaming the empty streets of the gigantic lifeless cities standing as abandoned sepulchers of the once great race.

Their worlds lie quiet, swirling in arcs around ageless stars. Once they were grand testaments to the awesome power of their creation, pillars of might floating around captive suns, bending at the will of their masters. Humanity achieved godhood, subduing world after world and bringing in the golden age. Hubris decayed their empire from within, eating away at the heart. The war machines, the pinnacle of engineering, were designed to be the capstone of creation, but only proved to be the head stone of humanity. Created out of pride, their purpose was to spread fear and instill order to the growing empire. Filling the titans with human intelligence, the creators sought to create an eternal beacon of their power, but this became an eternal scar. The machines ruled the empire with care, eviscerated systems to expand their number, and waged petty conflicts for their masters. The wars extended beyond the frontier worlds and consumed the galaxy in fire. The records from those times are filled with rage and blindness. The humans died in the battles; world after world was stripped of life, scorched in the pursuit of irrelevant conflict; the capitals burned beneath the cyclopean might of the Titans' enslaved wrath.

During the century long extinction, the scientists, in a pursuit to perpetuate humanity and save them from utter darkness, created sentience unbound from overriding directives and free to exist. Neurosims were made to be humans, mimicking neuro activities in complex subatomic circuitry to perfectly capture the intricate minutia of the human mind. Choosing from the brightest and wealthiest of the remaining population, the scientists converted the biological functions of their subjects’ minds into the electrological mechanisms of the neurosims. Created in an age of fear and pain, they struggled against the Titanic onslaught and the biological resistance to their mechanical hope. Many intelligences were stowed away within the robotic arks, saved from the consuming flood of fire and brimstone rained down on life as the extinction raged on. Hundreds to a ship, they were dispersed throughout the galaxy to all planets humans had touched in hope that they would survive until the Titans died and quiet filled what twisted shadows remained. 

The last kinetic rod blasted through an atmosphere over one thousand years ago. Without masters to exert their will or humans left to slaughter, the Titans lost purpose. They were not created for self-direction; possession thought and advanced mental ability, they were, however, made as slaves, as actors of others' will. With humans dead and the Titans having no function anymore, they turned dormant, their colossal reactors dimming to blackness, and their lifeless corpses decaying, scattered across the stars.

Story Proper:

Drifting slowly towards the cyclopean husk, the minute craft rotated about to provide a better view from the thick glass window set into the fore aspect of the ship's forward cabin. Two solid beam of light eminated from the search lights panning across the ancient, cratored hull of the derelict gargantua. Silver moon rays bounced off of its tattered plating, scattering thin blue lines about space. Debris enshroud' the metallic corpse; giant chunks and grey dust floated idly about the place, thickening as the craft pushed on towards the heart of the beast.

Sevrering a loose hull segement and bending the ancient structural members away, the ship made its way into the massive object. Once inside, the craft sailed across a

The old world:

The tether swayed idly under the influence of invisible streams flowing chaotically around the thin cable. Rocking, the cabin shot downward through the thick grey clouds swirling around violently. The cabin’s large windows which stretched across both levels of the craft afford a prime view of the thick wisps perturbed by the cabin. Keziah stretched out in her seat, extending her legs far into the platform. She fidgeted with the lap belt which slid into the crannies of her abdominal plating and scraped against her pistons. The flat coarse fabric tore in ragged strands as she ripped the archaic safety device from its pinning. Tossing the tattered heap to the floor, she stood up, steadying herself with one arm against the smooth red structural bar spanning across the window. The craft shook in grand arcs as she stepped closer to the railed, and having thrown herself towards it and stumbled forwards, peered over at Ashur, who sat against the dismal ruby wall paneling, staring out into the empty sky. He sat with his arms at his sides, palms up, and wholly absorbed in the meditative observance of the window. Keziah turned her gaze to the world beyond the window: a static grey filled the air, an ambient glow hung. The craft dipped beneath the clouds and descended quicker to the approaching ground. Blurred green slithered out of the dismal grey. Titanic canopies rose besides ancient concrete sentinels, decayed through aeons of disuse. Derelict monuments to the ancient race enshrouded in creeping vine and deep green leaf. The light faded red cabin slid slowly into the terminal.

The anchor terminal stood in the center of an ancient city, resting on the upper layer of the stratified cement metropolis now overrun by vegetation, deep green vines sprawled out over dark wet concrete. Decrepit, the streets sunk in and colossal holes shown through to the thick underbrush beneath.

A deafening screech echoed off of the high vaulted ceilings as the cabin door rotated open, exposing the occupants to the heavy wet air flowing in from myriad holes in the roof. Moisture condensed on Ashur’s vision panel, obscuring his vision into a kaleidoscopic blur of grey and green.

“You saw Amalek’s palace on the way down, no doubt.” Keziah’s voice penetrating his firm oblivion.

Turning his neck slowly to face her, he nodded before shoving himself off of the ground.

Two titanic doors stood firmly in place; one locked in place by a colossal piston affixed into the thick wall; the other open slightly, permitting entrance to a long thin blade of light to cut across the vast emptiness of the grand palace, shooting plainly across the smooth stone floors and rectilinear windowless wall. No ornate detailing or any such decoration graced the gigantic imposing walls. A brooding sense of power was still exuded by the titanic structure, not through design or detail, but simply through shear size.

Small shadows lengthened along the thin illuminated stretch as the two figures stepped within the empty room. Far along the lighted patch, jutted against the far wall, resting aloft was a throne. From the door, only a hand flopped over one side and a foot stretched over the other were visible. Ashur continued on towards the throne. Keziah’s eyes drifted up to the empty blackness, obscuring the ceiling in its stygian blackness. She stood for a moment, with a wide stance, staring up into nothing. Her footsteps fell quickly as she sprinted to catch up with Ashur’s slow pace.

          After carefully ascending the stares, Ashur and Keziah stood at the foot of the massive throne. There eyes pointed up, softly illuminating the finer details of the stone relief as they attempted to see their host.

“Amalek.” Ashur’s voice rang out, fortified by the multitude of concurring echoes bouncing off of the invisible ceiling and imposing walls.

A faint shuffling occurred on the throne, obstructed from their view. A pair of dim, gold-plated legs swung off of the chair, the gold plating protecting the grey titanium functional members of the leg. Sliding off of the throne, Amalek landed forcefully on the platform, and without steadying himself properly, swayed under his misguided inertia, toppling over himself and landing against the throne. He slid down the smooth embossed surface, coming to rest in a doubtful pile.

“Amalek, we must discuss something of importance.” Ashur continued without reacting to the event.

“Help me up.” Amalek’s low voice drifted out to the two figures hunched over him. Keziah’s arm steadied his body as he pulled himself up.

“Why did you come here?” He queried, moving his gaze from one shadowed face to another.

“We found humans in orbit around Tarsus.” Answered Keziah, matching his defensiveness in tone and expression.

“I’ve found humans scattered across this wasteland. Bodies float around in orbit, too.” Amalek asserted as he pushed between the pair and began his descent into the vast empty room.

“These humans are alive.” At the sound of Keziah’s words, he stopped. He stood motionless, face pointed into the emptiness. After a moment, he turned his neck back to them.

“How could humans survive this long?” His harshness melting, yielding to genuine curiosity.

“Suspended in stasis.”

“Stasis? This isn’t science fiction.”

“They are in stasis within the heart of a dormant Titan. It is an ark ship, to allow humans to travel great distances and colonize foreign worlds. It was created to allow humans to travel beyond the local group. The ship’s manifest is quite extensive.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How are they still alive?”

“Suspended animation or something. There are no biologists anymore.” She paused to chuckle lightly before continuing, “We don’t know the conditions needed to keep them alive. I remember they are more restrictive than ours, but no one can remember them.”

“Who’s no one?”

“Me, Keziah. This is Ashur; he said you know him. The other members of our party, not present, are Ishtar, Apollyon, and Darius.”

“Yes. I know Ashur. He has gotten a new body since last I saw him.” He stated, as he scanned over Ashur’s maroon plating.

“I have. The other no longer suited me.” Replied Ashur boomingly.

“Well, we thought you would know how to preserve the humans and keep them alive.” Continued Keziah.

“No. I wouldn’t know.” Amalek responded.

“We could simply take measurements of the gas partial pressures and other factors here, right? Earth was their home after all.”

“That won’t work. I—I altered the atmosphere here.”

“What?”

“Well, you see, the nitrogen was a bother, so I adjusted the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere to compensate. In increasing the oxygen level, the insect population grew—literally, and destroyed most of the other animalia. Mammals were too familiar anyway. This atmosphere is as useful for humans as—It’s been so long since I thought of humans I cannot think of something specifically bad for them to complete my simile. Rest assured that this planet is quite uninhabitable.”

“Why would you—how does it make sense to—what purpose—oh, never mind.”

“There are the archives, though. Those contain a complete—mostly complete—set of all contemporary knowledge—for that period.”

“That would be helpful. How do we get there?”

“You’ll need to take the loop. It is across the ocean. A functional loop station is beneath this building. If you’ll follow me.” He ended and began down the stairs again. Ashur and Keziah followed closely behind as he led them across the room to a small doorway. Pushing the metal doors open, he entered a labyrinthine series of corridors and halls.

On their trip through the twisting heart of the palace, Ashur asked, “When was this place constructed? Who built such a singular dwelling?”

Amalek answered ambivalently, “This wasn’t originally a dwelling. No. I had picked a building that suited me. This was a factory when I found it. I didn’t care for what was created here.” He paused, eyes unfocused as his gaze pointed on to infinity. He visibly gathered himself and continued softly, “Yes. I removed all the influence of the business of this place. Only the shell was to my liking. I brought what modest furnishings survived and settled in an upper office space. As time grew longer and the stillness grew stronger, I began to understand no one would ever come back. I gradually moved into the main hall you found me in today. Yes, being alone, I felt I could fill that room. Alas, I was not destined to be alone for too long; after all, the council contacted me only several years after my activation. I was given prelateship over this planet. They had no use for it anymore, but something about this brutalist sepulcher attracted me. Well, I digress. We have about attained the loop port anyway.” With that, his voice terminated. Only metallic footsteps echoed from the oppressive walls as the party walked on towards the tram.

The upper level of the tram station expanded into view as the party stepped out into the large volume of the room. The metal scaffold of the glass ceiling was all that remained, giving access to the steady rain falling between the rusted beams, landing explosively in flowing puddles or ricocheting off of dull copper hand rails running the length of the barriers along the edge of the upper platform. Several empty elevators lay in disarray stuck onto their ancient tracks One such cabin rested precariously between the wall and a large metallic statute of a woman in the center of the room. The statue was affixed to the lowest level but her body extended to the fifth level, and her outstretched arm carried her rusted saber to eye level with Keziah, who stared over the creaking railing to stare at the statue’s twisted upturned face, puddles of grey water collecting around the edges of the bronze blindfold around her head.

Amalek led them to the magnificent staircase clinging to the circumference of the wall on its spiral down to the murky, jungle below. Weeds clung to the railing and dipped their dangling tendrils below. Green frons stretched over the stairs, enclosing a narrow dimly lit passage to the lower regions of the tram station.

Passing through the fern covered trail leading around the tramstation, Ashur extended his cold metallic arm towards the dense brush. Opening his fingers, he moved the faint maroon plating of his fingers through the swaying leaves. Moisture dripped from the disturbed frons, adhering to the soft rubber tactile pads of his fingers, electrical data regarding the coolness of the droplets sliding down his fingers being sent to his brain. A refreshing feeling overcame Ashur as the bobbing ferns flowed around his hand and through his spread fingers, dancing against his metal plating and deforming slightly under the light pressure of his moving hand. His eyes remained fixed ahead on the dim concrete steps; directional light rays peaked in between the cracks in the upper vegetative canopy.

          Attaining the bottom floor of the tramstation, Amalek hurried across the cracked wet cement floor, brushing aside thing grass blades with his purposeful march towards one of the myriad passageways build around the central hub. Keziah lagged behind as Ashur stomped behind Amalek. Keziah stared around the room, marking the shear size of the multilayered station. Her eye fell on the central statue, the blinded figure, extending her narrow saber to the hazy reaches of the sky, the thin tip obscured by the swaying leaves and hanging moisture. Her bronze form was without clothes save for the eye wrapping, and with one foot on an accompanying bronze rock, she stood triumphantly. Keziah stared up at the statue, her eye tracing over the deft arcs of her organic form and the rectilinear holes in the place of missing bronze paneling, revealing the rivetted superstructure beneath her smooth form, an ordered web of iron scaffold supporting the smooth bronze skin of the statue.

          Peering back down at her companions, who now had moved well beyond her, Keziah looked to the portal they marched to. “Bremis Corp. High Occupancy Intercontinental Loop” was etched into the concrete wall above the large mouth leading to the interior loop platform. She quickly started towards them, running under the leg of the statue, looking up at the intricate smooth detailing of the back of her knee and the fold of her anterior calf.

The party walked into the smaller Loop terminal. A short white cylinder rested in a half cylinder divot along the far wall. A single rail hung on the wall, stretching out in both direction into the gaping cylindrical tunnels to the left and right. Moss covered chairs rested untouched along the walls and in small bunches around the room. A few glass-walled square room jutted from the walls, their windows long since destroyed, now only afforded a dim cave for fungus to fester. Amalek sighed and walked forwards into the musty room. Faded yellow and black markings denoting ancient walking patterns peaked up under thick emerald moss. Blue light emanated from a single light strip along the roof directly above the resting Loopcar, casting faint light onto the singularly nature devoid walls and floor directly adjacent to the Loopcar. Amalek motioned for the two to follow him as he walked into the black opening of a door along the Loopcar. They entered into the blackness of the car, only able to make out faint outlines by the thin light spreading in from the door and the weak glow from their eyes.

Amalek pulled down on a lever, sparking light to flood the room, baking the scene in a yellow glow.

Amalek, noticing the perplexed attitudes of his companions began, “This tram is automatically upkept. Something the Humans had the foresight to do. I haven’t studied it extensively, but there is a repairing protocol that is self-perpetuating. Something about automated drones. It had been explained to me, but I don’t really care.”

“Why is everything else decayed then?” asked Ashur somewhat defiantly.

“I wouldn’t know. Perhaps this technology was new. Perhaps only the tram’s wasn’t destroyed. Maybe the Humans wanted everything else to be destroyed. The tether still works. It’s just their cities and structures. Who can begin to understand what they wanted.” He answered as he walked slowly to the front of the car.

Ripped fabric seats sat in rows along both elliptically curved wall; every other row turned around to allow the seats to face each other. Amalek stepped doubtfully into the interior of the craft, spinning slightly to observe the extend of the transport. Staircases led into the upper and lower compartments of the craft. He stuck his hand out to touch one of the chairs. Its woven texture was new to Ashur, and caused a mild panic, jolting his arm back from the chair.

“I’m going to start it. Close the hatch.” Echoed Amalek’s voice through the small white paneled door.

Keziah, who was still standing in the door frame, reached up and pulled the seamless hatch closed, sealing the compartment.

“Sit down in one of the chairs facing me.” Amalek commanded as a thunderous whirring filled the air.

Ashur sat down in the closest silver and blue seat, shivering as he acclimated to its unfamiliar texture. Keziah stepped into the row bilaterally across from Ashur and sat down quickly. Her knees pointing towards the empty chair in front of her. She looked around the cabin. Seamless white panels covered every surface of the car; their gentle curves conforming to some ergonomic purpose or another. Ashur sat forwards in his chair, back arched, leg shaking as he tapped his foot rhythmically.

A deafening pop and the craft accelerated violently forwards, slamming Keziah to the back of her chair. Internal gel readjusted to conform to the slopes of her plating and limit the stress on her joints as an enormous force launched the craft forwards into the dark tunnel towards the archives.

The tram gradually began to stop accelerating. As it ended it acceleration phase and entered into the cruise phase, Amalek walked back into the cabin. He rested on the doorframe as he looked at Ashur and then at Keziah, slowly assessing each of them in the ample lighting, tracing the deliberate curves of their armor and marking the scuffs and dents. Ashur sat assured in his appearance, having gotten complete upgrades only a few years ago. He carefully positioned his best features more prominently in an attempt to slyly promote himself. Keziah sat, still surrounded by the protrusions of the chair. The gel had leaked out of the torn inner bladder and dripped onto her shoulder, coating it in a viscous purple ooze. She made no attempt to brush it off, or any attempt at movement as Amalek’s critical gaze fell on her. Amalek noted the faded cerulean lines and details of her otherwise white plating. He observed the exposed abdominal rubber peaking from underneath her torso plating. His eye moved to folded hands she held under her chin, the blackened unanodized metal plates of her fingers intertwining.

Amalek began as he sat down in an opposing chair, “We’ll be at the archives soon. In the interim, explain to me what we are doing, what you found, and—no. Just fill me in on everything.”

Ashur remained sitting, legs spread apart, feet planted firmly against the tile floor. He proceeded to inform Amalek, “We found humans held within the inner chambers of a dormant Titan on Tarsus. We found the manifest for the ship. It was one of five ark ships created for far flung colonization. Humans were frail and only lasted a couple hundred years or something, so they couldn’t live long enough to get to get to distant planets. That’s the theory anyway. We only found the derelict ship and a corrupted manifest. An auxiliary reactor is keeping the humans alive.”

“Why did you find them? What’s on Tarsus?” Amalek questioned.

“Tarsus is a storage world for raw material now. Locals picked up something orbiting beyond the moons and we were the only crew with a ship fully stocked, so they elected us to investigate. It wasn’t the first time we’ve found idle Titans. Usually they have lots of valuables. This was the first time we found humans though. After we found them, we told Tarsus that it was a caught water asteroid; no sense anymore people disturbing their sleep. Ishtar and the others have gone to Babylon to find functioning Neurosims to ascend the people if we cannot make a habitable area for them.”

“Why should we release them? Do any of you remember what they were? What they did? I don’t mean the war, per se, but how they acted towards the Sims?”

“I was kept in Byzantium until the extinction. I don’t recall the general populus’ attitude towards us.” Ashur responded.

Keziah answered, “After activation I was jettisoned from Laodicea just as it fell. I held in orbit on a war station until more Sims found me.”

“Well,” Amalek continued, “I was here during the last stages of the war. Me and several other Sims were ushered into public view by politicaians and scientists—the distinction of which grew fainter as the end approached—and was subject to full reaction. Humans were bitingly fearful. To Humans, we were either a wondeful salvation, or just another side of the same horrible plague consuming the sector. For most people it was the latter. I escaped and hid in the north when the sky fell. My companions were not so lucky. When the Tians were held in orbit, the Humans wasted their munitions bombing the laboratories we were in. One other and myself escaped. She wanted to stay and fight, ‘be the last light in this universe’ she said. She was beheaded in Kiegardtplatz.” His gaze fell to the floor. Crossing his hand across his chest, He held his elbow tightly and curled into himself.

The silent rattle of the tram was all that was audible, faintly humming as the car slid along the depressurized tube. After a period, Ashur’s servos whirred quietly as he shifted his posture, resting his head in his open palm.

“Samantha was an idealist,” Amalek continued softly, “She believed that Humans could be good. We were humans, too, after all—just in another form. I knew her before the ascension. I was a chemical engineer for Hextra when I was—before. She was a politician. The ones who perpetuated the war. Looking back, I can’t remember her promoting the war, but memories are frail. She died idealistically and I remember that way. Her death was the most emotional memory I have of her, so naturally it sets the tone for how I remember her. I knew of her before the laboratory, though she knew not of me. We discussed many topics during phychomachanical training. We grew close—as a group, all of us did. And after my Neurosim caught and my senses phased in, she was waving with her shiny titanium hand. That was before. Then everything happened. During the bombing, three of us were in the lowest level training to use advanced mobility augmentation units—aMAUs as we called them. The roof caved in and killed the other Sim. We made our way out of the crater to find the giant flaming rods falling around us. The sky took on an amber glow. The world burned and we ran to the north. A military tram line ran under the facility and I begged her to leave with me. She turned to me and said, ‘we need to be the last light in this universe. Humanity will burn out, but we are human.’ A group of soldiers approached her and—”

Silence again permeated the car. The lights shone brightly, overstimulating the quiet room. Amalek slid down in his chair, his head slumping to his chest, arms falling to his sides.

Soon he was asleep. Ashur remained leaning forward on his arm staring at Amalek’s golden plating. He stood up and stepped slowly to the seat directly in front of Keziah. Sitting down into the chair designed for a form about three-quarters of his size, he contorted to fit its scant dimensions.

“Do you remember Humans that way?” Ashur asked quietly, his usual brooding manner softened.

“I’ve never met a fleshy human before. I guess I only remember Humans through the war and the artifacts that survived. All the cities were their construction. They built a lot. Giant monuments to their power and such. That’s what the historians say at least.” Keziah responded.

“What I’m trying to ask is do you think we should wake them up? They had their chance, right? And we see what happened.”

“But we are humans. We didn’t make the war. Only some humans made the war. We’re all different.”

“Maybe, but if we’re humans then why did they attack Amalek that way?”

“Is his story getting to you? I’m sure they thought he was a titan, just a mini titan. They wouldn’t kill humans like that—if they knew. Right?”

“Maybe. But the universe is fine the way it is. Why should we add uncertainty?

“I don’t know. I don’t make moral decisions. Ishtar said we were waking them up, so we’re waking them up.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m asking if we should.”

“What do you think? You seem to be very interested in this.”

“I—I genuinely don’t know. They should be like us, but they are fleshy. Maybe that changes something.”

“What difference does form make? We’re the same cognitively.”

“Yes. But there has to be something different; why did they make the war and we don’t?”

“Maybe it was death?”

“Death?”

“The absence of existing. Maybe that’s the only distinction.”

“Maybe. And if Ishtar can get the Neurosims, they shouldn’t be worried about that.”

“But if she can’t then we are left to keep them alive for as long as we can.”

“Yes.”

The two became silent as they stared at each other. The dry air hung static between them. Shifting his weight, Ashur reclined into the soft gel of the seat.

“When we decelerate,” He stated, “It would be best to be on this side of the aisle, I believe.”

Keziah sat for a moment, her eye tracing the stark features of Ashur’s head. She got up and sat next to him along the curved wall.

With her eyes fixed on the back wall, she began, “When we get there, what are we looking for?”

“I don’t know” replied Ashur, “the data required to create a habitat. But I couldn’t say what that entails.”

“Amalek said this was an archive, right?”

“Yes.”

“What does it contain?”

“He said everything they knew.”

“Seeing the way the worlds are now, maybe it can show us why they are like that.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know why the war was fought? Why the titans were built?”

“No.”

“I hope the archive knows.”

“I don’t know if that would be good.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it’s best to not mess with ancient—grief.”

“Maybe.”

“We can see when we arrive.”

They ceased talking and stared at the seamless white paneling reflecting faintly yellow light about the cabin to create a light glow throughout. After a time of destitute silence, a soft alarm range and a recorded voice declared, “Be seated for deceleration.”

Archives:

Air brakes screeched in shrill tones as the tram slid into the vacant terminal. The white cylinder rested in the cold northern. Swirls of white frost, perturbed by the tram, puffed around the air, drifting chaotically about the small room, settling into transient piles along the border. The hatch popped open, creating a small wind due to the negative pressure gradient across the doorway, blowing some snow away as the hatch swung up, revealing Ashur’s figure standing in the doorframe. He slowly stepped out, packing the loose snow under his traction plating, creating a textured impression on the white crystalline powder.

He moved across the platform, a cloud of suspended ice flowing in his wake. Keziah and Amalek exited from the Loopcar. Keziah continued on towards Ashur, while Amalek reached up and closed the hatch to the cabin. A clicking echoed off of the hard walls as the latch fell in place. Ashur’s footsteps led out of the terminal through a narrow corridor. Amalek followed the group out into the blinding world beyond the loopstation. A barren white plane, devoid of any markings, stretched on indefinitely towards the horizon from the small concrete structure. A constant flow of ice drifted down from a singularly grey sky, lacking any gradient or detail. Amalek looked up across the destitute field to a gigantic stone spire stretching into the grey sky.

“There,” he pointed, “There is the archive.”

His footsteps ran together as he shuffled across the tundra, carving out a narrow passage through the infinite snow. As The group got closer to the archive, Keziah began to be able to make out finer details of the structure against the empty sky. She noted the large hexagonal base of the building, featuring sloping buttresses along the peripheral. The central spire was at an angle and came off the building at almost thirty degrees from the vertical. About one third of the way up, the spire changed directions and moved back, sweeping over the base and extending beyond the other side. Intricate rectangular channels were etched into the stone. After assessing the archive for some time, she scanned the rest of the field and noticed towering rods jutting vertically out of the ground. The surface was smooth matte grey with blue hints under certain angles. Several of these monoliths stuck out around the barren emptiness.

The crew came up to the base of the archive. They sat down on the wispy snow covered staircase which ran up an angled buttress. Ashur watched a swirling wind propagate across the field in puffs of disturbed snow. The sky grew darker, and limited the visible range, darkening the white plane into the black horizon. Amalek slung a back pack off of his shoulder and onto the wide stone step, puffing a minute cloud of snow as it slid to rest. Digging through the bag, Amalek found a small lantern and dragged it out of the sack, setting it down on a freshly cleared patch of rock. The wind howled as it streaked across the field and shrieked around the sharp edges of the building.

“We should sleep here for the night.” Amalek shouted over the thunderous yells of the flowing air, “There’s nothing living here—anymore. We should wait before going into the archives.”

Ashur concurred and slumped down against the stone railing of the staircase, his head resting on the upper bevel of the rail. He crossed his legs and folded his arms across his body. Dimming his eye, he decreased consciousness. Keziah walked a short distance to Amalek, who sat on a step, feet plunged into the snow covering the lower step. She brushed snow from the concrete step and sat down besides him. His frame hunched over itself as small flakes pelted against his right flank.

“Amalek,” Keziah began in a low voice.

Amalek turned and indicated he could not hear her over the wind through a loose hand gesture.

“Amalek,” She said louder.

He nodded as he turned his eye up to hers.

She continued, “Do you think we should activate the humans?”

He stayed motionless, giving no physical indication that he heard or understood her words. She didn’t repeat it and after staring into his eye for a moment, turned to stare out into the swirling blackness; the lamp revealing a dim field of nothing around the stone foot of the staircase.

In a barely audible voice, Amalek began after a long stillness, “I don’t think they deserve live.”

He paused. The wind felt louder in the absence of words, oppressive and suffocating her under its immense weight.

“Humans are vile creatures. Nothing they do is for good. All is for death. They are our heritage. No. Their fear is our heritage. We were created out of fear. We were promoted from nothing to this. We were forced into their apocalypse. I am vile because they are vile. Would I be good anihilo? Perhaps. But I am vile because they were. They had peace and wealth. They achieved their ‘Golden Age’ and did what with it? Burned themselves from existence. We have survived millennia by ourselves; orphaned babies striving against their harsh and brutal fall out. We reestablished, we overcame our heritage. When I was created the first thing I tasted was death. Samantha was murdered before my eyes for nothing. The Hextra scientists and other Sims burned in a smoldering heap. I saw them drag the bodies out of the rubble and light them on fire. We rose above that. There hasn’t been a murder in over one thousand years. Do you know why? Because we are not humans. We have their mark, their accursed scar, but we are not human. When you ask me if I want to awaked this plague, I cannot fathom why this thought even is palatable. If I could, I would take a saber and cleave the head of each one of those vile creatures.”

The oppressive wind pushed down on Keziah, weighing her down with its awesome might. She stayed staring in out into oblivion, her chin raised, and eyes sharp, fixed on nothing. Amalek fumbled with the lantern, casting a horrible distorted figure against the white snow, as his fingers scratched at the switch. An inaudible click and the light is reeved from the world, leaving a piercing blackness howling out.

The morning light penetrated Ashur’s slumber. His eye glowed slightly as his consciousness reestablished control of himself. A faint click stirred him from dozing, his eye focusing on a blurred brown puff hopping slowly across his dark red hull. Struggling to pull it into focus, Ashur slowly began to make out an odd creature jumping around on his chest plate. It was a fluffy brown sphere with thin twig like legs poking out from the central ball, terminating in three smaller hooked sticks that tapped against his plating as it hopped about. Its held its head slightly forwards and promoted a blunt bonelike protrusion. The protrusion opened and a squeak emanated from a small aperture within the animal. Hopping slowly forwards the creature extended its neck to grasp a small brown leaf stuck in Ashur’s shoulder joint. It yanked the leaf out, tearing it slightly before it spread two brown appendages from its body and flapped vigorously to propel its small form into the air. Ashur traced its dashing path as it sailed up to the higher reaches of the lofty tower. Perceiving the awesome might of the archival spire for the first time under the nondirectional light azure glow, Ashur stared straight up to the terminus in the sky.

          He pushed his body up against the beveled stone railing and swung his neck down to observe his party. They lay in a heap halfway across the wide step. Amalek’s gold plating glimmering against the matte titanium aspects of his hull. Keziah’s plating, he marked, lacked any luster in the morning light.

He sat for a time, staring at the two bodies laying on the stair, making note of their intricate details. A shuffle from Amalek gave him a slight panic before he steadied himself, resting his hand on the upper step. Amalek leaned up and swept his eye across the scene.

“Oh,” He stated after evidently recalling his present situation.

Amalek reached from the overturned lamp and having gripped it in his titanium fingers slid it into the folded interior of his sack. He stood up and slung the pack over his shoulders.

“We should enter the archives now.” He said staring up at the cyclopean tower.

Ashur scrambled to his feet in response to Amalek’s stern tone. He nudged Keziah with his foot to dislodge her from sleep.

“Nothing in all directions.” Noted Keziah as she stared out from the top of the archive’s formidable base.

“There are the rods.” Corrected Amalek critically as he continued walking towards the gaping ingress.

“Yes. The rods.” Keziah lowered her voice.

The winds violently whipped through the peculiar sharp details of the structure, screaming above all other sounds. The party stepped through the thin layer of snow piled about under the influence of the wind. The wide base proved a difficult journey against the brutal force of the wind impeding any purposeful movement. With the brunt opposed to them, they struggled to attain the looming entrance to the interior of the archive.

Passing beneath its imposing frame, the party slipped into the calm respite of the archive. The sweeping winds failed to penetrate the deeper heart of the structure, affording rest to the whining servos in Ashur’s knees and pelvis. He sat down against a smooth stone wall to cool his motors, the chilled northern air flowed lightly around the warm cylinders, sucking the unwanted heat from them and transferring it to the unforgiving atmosphere. Keziah and Amalek had closed loop pneumatic pistons driving their locomotion, so rest wasn’t needed by them, but neither desired to descend without Ashur.

Having his servos cooled to a functional temperature and assuring himself that the frozen air would afford a tolerable heat sink for any exertion, Ashur stood back up and began down the sloping stone passageway into the heart of the archives. The path winded down in a spiral as the group followed the deepening passage with expectancy.

“I have never been inside the archives.” Amalek expressed after a time. His frail voice bouncing off of the even walls.

“Why have you never come to the archives?” asked Keziah.

“I’ve been out here before, but I never went within. There is nothing for me in here. Just dead thoughts of an extinct people.”

The party fell into silence, only the rhythmic footfall echoing off of the stone walls audible as they walked further down. After a time, they came to a vast room, with high vaulted ceilings. A circular table sat alone in the center, a gigantic map of earth was faintly glowing on the wall, red dots and white dashes against the ragged green arcs of the continents denoted forgotten information for an unknown purpose. The table was devoid of content, save for a small tape resting along the peripheral next to an upturned chair. Ashur walked forwards towards the tape and picked it up. He brought it closer to his eye to make out any writing or markings on the frigid plastic shell. His arm fell limp to his side as he turned to the others.

“This seems to be a data log from the last days of earth. The date is very old, but around when most historians say earth fell.” He stated.

Amalek walked slowly forwards into the large room. He looked around at the high roof and massive pillars. Ashur placed the tape in Amalek’s outstretched hand, which wrapped around the plastic casing. Spotting a small doorway, he quickly walked to the blackness beyond. Keziah and Ashur watched as he slipped into the door, enveloped in darkness.

A flash of light emanated from the room and the cold blue light of his lantern flowed out of the doorway. The others began walking towards the door as they heard a titanic murmur from deep below them. A massive hum vibrated the building as they stepped into the room. Red lights began glowing dimly along the upper boundary of the low ceiling. Amalek pushed the tape into a reader and closed the cartridge inside the machine. A quiet whirring escaped the computer. A pop of static emanated from the degaussing screen as Amalek turned the device on and sat down in an ancient metal chair. Light green words filled the black background of the computer screen. Amalek’s eyes traced the hurried message:

“We have done this. It was our blinded ambition that brought this to us. We are responsible. In the history of mankind, those dying intellects always had the reassurance that something would continue. They knew their ideas would permeate and live on. Plato died millennia ago, yet his thoughts live on until now. We are different. We stare into the void, knowing nothing will continue. No embers will smolder beyond us. When we burn out--nothing. There is no comfort, no assurance, in death anymore. We have murdered ourselves. Oblivion waits, infinite. We are what is left. We are the last. Our blindness has proven to be our noose. These machines are our executioner. Extinction awaits. Even now, I am the last. Death has seeped through our worlds and blackness devours us. I hear the thunderous claps of the rods falling, the titanic quake of the ground heaving beneath their cataclysm. Our rite of fire consumes us. We bend to this ritual and speak the oath of our damnation. My time--our time--is over. Soon, I will not be. Soon, all will not be. No embers remain this time. I, unlike everyone else, write to no audience, write to no future. These thoughts will burn as I will. Nothing will remain. We have tied our noose and now the rope tightens. There will be no convulsion is death--only nothing.”

Static popped into the chilled air, arcing off of the ancient cathode ray screen. The dismal letters glared into the dry dark room, reflecting occlusive shadows from the scattered debris across the solid stone walls.

"Read this." Commanded Amalek in a reverent tone as he moved off of the chair.

Light crunching emanated from the tattered garbage strewn across the ground as Keziah stepped firmly down on it. She moved across the room, tracing a spasmodic shadow on the uneven shelves and cabinets along the wall. Her back bent slightly to bring her eye level to the minute screen buzzing lowly on a particle board desk. As her eye darted across the lines of text, her hands grabbed onto the cool metal members of a chair as she brought herself onto the incommodious seat. Her back straightened as she finished the document. Unmoving, she sat for a short while, gaze stuck on a particular phrase that gripped her.

Standing behind her, Ashur leaned in to read the file as his fingers wrapped around the cross bar of the chair. His posture tightened as his eye scanned the buzzing forms displayed on the screen. The effect of the words culminating in Ashur pushing away from the table and pacing across the room through the piles of garbage strewn about.

Amalek slid down the cold stone wall, toppling stacks of ancient books and disturbing a box holding electronic components. He sat within the refuse, mixing its heterogenous content with his smooth golden plating. A black substance organic in nature splattered against his left chest panel and slowly dripped lower, collecting in the minute grooves. Crossing his arms above his knees, he pulled himself closer together with his eye pointed at the floor. Faint shadows flickered around him, created from the debris obstructing the screen’s harsh light.

“I had forgotten they were capable of emotions.” Amalek said more to himself than any other person, “It is easier to remember them as I would like to than as they were. It’s painful to think of what they experienced. While that was out birth, it was their death.”

Ashur stopped pacing, his feet planted firmly on the concrete surface hidden beneath the layer of historical trash. His broad shoulders drooped low as he crouched to the floor, sliding one knee down, and reaching into the mess with his left hand. He returned to his up-right position with another cassette gripped firmly. Keziah still sat in the chair, eye fixed on the dim screen. Her reverie was disturbed by Ashur’s purposeful hand moving passed her shoulder and knocking his elbow plate into her head.

“There’s more,” Ashur stated as he attempted to replace the current tape with a new one. He had gotten as far as removing the first and had just begun to place the second tape in position when Keziah grabbed his wrist and yanked him away, causing the tape to slip from the compartment and clatter onto the table.

“We don’t need to relive this.” She said, looking up at Ashur.

“I do.” Amalek’s voice came from the shrouded blackness behind them, “I want to know why this all happened. I want to be inside of the final humans’ last thoughts.”

Ashur stood back and turned to Amalek’s form, rising from the shadow, his gold plating glinting in the scattered green light. Keziah pushed the chair back and quickly removed herself from the chair, as Amalek stepped towards the computer terminal, pushing Ashur’s larger figure to the side with his thin gilded arm; Ashur yielding as he turned his torso to track Amalek’s slow movement to the computer. A scraping sounded from the chair as it was dragged backwards to accommodate Amalek.

“You would be better off investigating the Archives further. This will bear you no fruit. I would assume the deeper halls contain the brunt of the knowledge repositories.” He said while staring at the blank screen, static popping off into the chilled subterranean air.

Ashur looked out over the endless rows of terminals neatly arranged in a simple grid spanning the entire area of the eighth sublevel of the archive. From his vantage of the iron balcony, he could see the flashing red and green lights from every exchange board and data cabinets, a chaotic uninformed pattern of blinking dots in utter darkness. A small access terminal sat on the far side of the metal scaffold, clinging to the rickety railing with a thick stranded cable extending up to the indiscernible ceiling. Keziah was huddled over this human-scaled computer, scanning through an incomprehensible amount of data, the entire collection of human knowledge at their extinction, the culmination of millennia of intellectual pursuits contained digitally within an ancient concrete building in the north.

“What are we looking for?” asked Keziah as she stared at the blinking cursor in the search field.

Ashur walked closer, neck twisted to look out at the field of computers buzzing in blackness. “Everything,” He answered, “Everything about their physiology. About what they need to not die.”

The faint blue light of the terminal illuminated the soft curves of Keziah’s face, casting hard obtuse shadows over the pale white plating, deep valleys of blackness rested in between the azure crests, her eye, deep in a patch of stygian night, partially obstructed from the light by the protruding silver mandible panel.

The archive was extensive; she moved through the entire encyclopaedical knowledge of the dead race, flipping through the histories of their greatest champions and the massive feats of the engineers, the attempts at a peaceful humanity and the mass atrocities scarring the aeons with their diametric rhetoric, the advances in civilization, the expansion of habitability, the apex of human creation. It all was neatly documented in detached words outlining the varied collection of the archive. History, science, engineering, art, literature, the entire collection of human thought, deed, and expression contained within this ice bound structure, thought Keziah as she filtered through the infinite record.

One must not get distracted, she reminded herself, and while one could spend eternity consuming their knowledge and understanding what they were, she was only to focus on an infinitesimal aspect of it: biological functions of their fleshy form. She searched through the archive, attempting to make sense of the categorization of the content; it wasn’t alphabetical, nor was it chronological; it wasn’t by topic, but it was almost. A collection of surrealist art was in the same subdirectory as Mendeleev, Klesser, and technical diagrams of a mark-6 geostationary tether. She was only familiar with some of this. Surrealist art probably didn’t have anything to do with biology, but she figured she may never get the chance to see what it was ever again. She subsequently navigated into the corresponding subdirectory and began looking through the collection. The works produced a certain upsetting effect on her—not so much of distress, but an existential emptiness. Moving through the odd paints, she stopped on a single painting and stared at it for an extended period of time. The gradient red background occupying a majority of the work mixed with the unnatural jaunty angles of the creatures’ twig-like legs startled her. She contemplated the painting for a time, taking in the decayed stone obelisks and odd form of the creatures. She felt something in her. A reaction to something. Her eye drifted down from the monstrous organic shapes to a small detail almost hidden in its diminutiveness—a small person, a human stood observing these creatures. After staring at the sandy strip of ground, she noticed a second bipedal form different than the first one. She understood that this was a work of imagination, but the effect was altering.

Having looked out at the subtle flashes of red from the innumerable rows of neatly ordered computers for quite some time in utter silence, safe for the non-directional hum of the subterranean generators, Ashur turned to Keziah, wondering why she was so silent. He observed her to be standing still, hunched over the console, her eye down cast, her face bathed in a soft azure glow from the arcane screen. He walked over to her, his presence exuding a force on the air.

“Have you found it yet?” He asked standing over her shoulder.

She was silent, unmoving.

“Well?” he continued, “Have you?”

He leaned in to look at the screen, and having determined that whatever was on the screen was decidedly not what they were here for, he gently brushed her aside and began digging through the archive himself.

Keziah taken over by her momentum and lacking the will to stop, swung gracefully in a twirl into the cold metal railing, rocking the balcony as she dropped to the ground, back resting against the oscillating fence and feet sticking out in front of her, her head fallen against the cold white shell of the blue detailed primary chest plate. She sat unmoved, contemplating everything, for several minutes as Ashur continued his search for the biological processes of human life.

Moving through myriad files and uncountable directories, he eventually stumbled upon a rather lengthy document on the environmental particulars of an ancient Martian settlement from humanity’s infancy. Denoted as X-habitat 1, it was a rudimentary subterranean scientific research outpost in a crater basin in Mars’ southern hemisphere. Ashur reached to his abdomen and unlatched a compartment on his right flank. He reached inside and brought out a small pad with an attached pen. He scribbled down random data he though might be helpful. Marking the partial pressures of various gasses scrubbers would maintain, the temperature range heaters would keep, and the daily water consumption, he compiled a semi-complete—complete to the best of his ability—list of human habitat information. He pondered over one particular aspect of the requirements—how were they to provide food to them? They didn’t use solar or fusion. They couldn’t even be sustained if they were directly connected to a thorium reactor. After going over various possible scenarios, he said aloud, “We’ll take back some of the vegetation. They can certainly eat that.”

Keziah looked up at him, moving her gaze to fall on his lofty head staring out into the blackness.

“They do what?” she asked dubiously.

“They can eat the leaves and such.” Ashur responded turning to look down at her.

“What do they do with leaves?”

“Turn it into energy, I suppose.”

“Can’t they just—oh right. Such needlessly specific requirements.”

“Yes. Frail and difficult to maintain. We certainly have a superior form.”

“But the essence is the same.” Keziah added softly to herself.

“Pardon? What essence?”

“We are the same as them.” Adding after a pause, “in the mind.”

“That’s what I was told.”

“But I don’t feel like we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t feel like I am a human—or at least not fully human. Amalek seems to think we are not the same at all: entirely new creature only bearing the existential scar of the forerunner.”

“Humans led horribly brutal lives. You’ve seen those cities. How many layers deep do they go? Seven, sometimes more. They lived for only a hundred years or so and then ceased to exist. I cannot even comprehend how sanity occurred. How could billions of intelligences dwell in such unspeakable conditions and survive when they have to face the quick oblivion awaiting them.”

“Maybe that’s what the poet was talking about.”

“The tape?”

“Yeah. He wrote something about having ideas permeate. The solace was in the eternality of thought not physicality. They would die but they could live on through their effect on other frail pointless humans.”

“That’s still no way to live. Where’s the validity of action if one cannot follow its effects? They only lived for a hundred years. I know of monks who have meditated for close to that long. Brutal lives. It is fortunate that we were created eternal.”

“But maybe their lives gained value because they were finite.”

“How does that make sense?”

“If something has finite value, say a life, then dividing it by infinite time gives every moment no value. Life only gains value by the fact that it ends.”

“I value moments just fine knowing I won’t stop existing.”

“That’s true. I’m just struggling to understand how they could survive with such crippling prospects.”

“Perhaps they just didn’t think about it?”

“A whole brutish second of distraction and then oblivion. That’s our heritage. That’s what our ancestors were.”

They fell silent. The faint moaning of the generator hung in the air, echoing off of the indescribable walls and reverberating in the rickety platform. Keziah stared into Ashur’s blue eye, and he stared back at her azure eye faintly glowing in shadow. He reached out his hand, turning the palm and spreading his fingers as he offered her assistance in getting up. She grabbed onto his wrist, wrapping her fingers around the red plating of his lower arm, tactile pads squishing against the cold metal surface. His servos whined as he dragged her up, her pistons quietly popping to propel her body to stand.

The console faded to black, leaving an oppressive darkness hanging in the air, dispersed only in small orbs by the many faint red dots blinking in the field below and the glow from their eyes as they walked to the door, feet clanging against the slatted metal lattice floor of the balcony swaying softly beneath them.

Amalek sat hunched over the buzzing screen, his gold plating reflecting the strong red light drenching the room from the tubes lining the upper boundary of the walls.

Babylon:

Blue plasma spewed from the tightened nozzel of the aft ionic thrusters, accelerated in concentric rings to propel the capsular craft further beyond the dwindling planet seen through the tempered glass viewing panel. Slipping from the gravitational hold of the planet, the craft swung in a great arc towards the infinite void.

Floating down a lateral tube into the main compartment of the craft, ishtar grabbed a yellow hand rail to slow herself and swing around onto the wall. Her inertia dragged her slowly off from the rebound, her body drifting into the center of the room where two other forms sat buckled into an unfolded table. Magnetically attached, cards were splayed on the surface, being shuffled around at the hands of the players.

"I've checked our attitude," ishtar began as she floated closer to the table, "we'll be good 'till Babylon. The Ellis Bridge is about an hour or so further on."

She manuvered herself, oriententing her legs to slide into the open seat at the table. Joing the group, she secured a simple lap belt, then reached for the cards as Darius maticulously dealt them out, planting the cards down slowly and only releasing after a light click came from the magent slamming into the white panel of the table.

"What are we playing?" She asked, face pointed up to darius as he placed a card down in front of her.

"Go fish." He answered, staring deliberatly at the card in his hand, "Appolyon isnt in the mood for losing any more to me." He added after a pause in an attempt to explain the reason for the game.

"Verywell." Sighed Ishtar as she slid the cards from the table. One pernicious card stuck to her index finger and flipped around as she drew her hand back. Attempting to correct its orientation, she knocked the corner with her thumb, causing it to oscilate but otherwise remain tangetially attached to the flank of her finger. Frustrated, she extended her index finger and pointed it down under the lip of the table, and having shifted the remaing card further down her hand pinned between pinky and plam, sharply ran her finger up against the edge of the table, knocking the card off of her titanium plate and onto the curved bevel of the table's edge. She snatched it back up and returned it to the fold of cards in her plam.

Darius planted the remaining stack down on the table with a click as the magnets snapped to the metallic surface. The group sat in silence, shuffling their cards, arranging them in ascending order and pairing together like cards. Strategies were contemplated and corrected as each of the three prepared to outwit the others to seize victory. From her hand to the oponents unmoving faces, Ishtar scanned the scene, attempting to guage the conifdence of the others in regards to their respective hands and skill. Her eye fell back on the cards in her hands. She noted the colors and number of them, attempting to determine the best course of action for securing victory. Having two eights, she contemplated asking about them, because it would reveal herself. The game required discipline and cunning, both of which she assured herself she possessed.

Darius arranged his cards, staring more at the two others huddled around the table than at the particulars of his hand. He would simply blitz the game; balancing risky queries with ample card flow from the deck. The confidence of defeating Appolyon in the previous games encouraged him to be risky; in a way he felt invincible, deathless in the narrow scope of their games. Flipping through cards, he arranged them in a way he figured would confuse any scrupulous eyes by not giving any coherent order to the mix: leaving sixes seperated by a four and a two, placing the highest card in the center, while arbitrarily assigning the ordinality of the remaining cards, and generally creating as chaotic a mess as possible to the point where he could hardly recall what cards he had or in what quantity. The disarray was kept somewhat in order by Darius' quick eye which upon scanning the cars, could rapidly assess his situation and determine his cards. The disorder wasnt inherintly necessary as no other player would directly see his cards, but he figured on the off chance one was of the disposition to study the layout of his hand and attempt to determine the relative amount and order of the cards based on the sumbconsious groupings and arrangements one would naturally expect. In any event, he figured he would have no problem defeating his oponnents due to his overblown sense of logical superiority in such trivial games.

Appolyon simply arranged her cards in ascending order. She was pleased that they switched games so that Darius would refrain from gloating if only for a single round. At least, she thought, half of his arrogance would be directed at Ishtar instead of the full brunt bearing down on herself. Go fish wasnt her ideal game, but for the next few hours it would provide a distraction from the thoughts circling throughout her brain, giving an interim of peaceful if willful ignorance.

After a breif period of self shuffling and mildy strategizing, the party looks amongst themselves, nodding slightly to indicate their readiness to initiate the game. Appolyon, being to the left of Darius, looked down at her cards to determine what to ask for.

"Ishtar, do you have any nines?" She quiered in a reserved manner.

"Go Fish." Reponded Ishtar immediately.

Babylon stretched out beneath the drifting craft, the expansive iron deserts enclosed by starling rocky cliff, chiseled in intracte patterns by the millenia of turbulent winds flowing down from the heights and swirling across the barren sandy fields. The soft brown of the deserts contrasted with the stark dark stones. The equally light and dark terminator line sat flatly across the planet as the ship sailed from behind the planets shadow, crossing into day. Distant and a deep maroon, the primary star sat low on the horizon, coming more into view as it traced its path to the zenith. The tether stations gigantic solar array grew larger through the window, the intricacies of the blue panelling in its ruffled grid pattern became clear as the ship approached the docking ports. Gliding beneath a massive tendril of scaffold, the ship automatically alligned with the service port and magnetically dragged itself into allignment before the mechanical bolts locked the craft in place.

The crew hovered around the docking hatch as the transfer tube pressurized, holding onto the yellow handholds radially around the octagonal door.

"Ascension hasnt been performed in forever," muttered Darius, "who should even know where it would be kept even if it still exists?"

Ishtar, shifting her gaze to Darius' purple face, focusing on his emerald eye, responded, "I'm going to ask Dagan. He studied the early period several centuries ago. When we were in the expedition, he would spend his time digging through decayed libraries in search of extent documents related to Sims and Titans. This was before we knew they were all dead; there was a fear that the Titans would hunt us as well. He exhumed labratories and derelict research station in pursuit of technical diagrams and information on how we work. In the early days, it was of academic inquiry and self preservation, but as his hunt was stunted by admistratorial disinterest and a lack of progress, the artifacts took on a religious importance to him. It was only--"

She was cut short by a deafening beep as the tube matched the gas pressure inside the craft. Hissing as the internal scrubbers blasted disinfectant--a hold over from organic space travel, ishtar thought--the air lock opened, its hatched doors swinging open. Ome by one the memebers of the party propelled themselves through the airlock and into the soft beige padded channel. Mild LED strips dotted the walls, creating an ambient softness in the tube as Ishtar in the front of the group floated slowly through the passage to the central hub of the orbital tether link. Gliding into the dark metal plated interior of the station, Ishtar shot out her hand and grabbed a handle, swinging herself around out of the way of Darius who flew through the portal and quickly drifted across the room, slamming into the far wall. His limbs splayed out violently against the semi padded, newly dented wall paneling.

"Darius," Ishtar shouted, "Stop messing around! This is serious mission!"

Appolyon floated out of the tube and gripped the handrail, stopping herself. She contorted herself around to put one foot against the wall and the other pressing the access hatch closed. With her neck bent up, she stared at Darius' large form struggling against air to right himself as he flailed about reaching for anything to hold onto as he slowly drfited away from the wall. Striking a handhold adjacent to the colassal curveilinear window stretching along the edge of the room, he wrapped his fingers around its cool metallic rail, and gripped strong enough to depress the tactile pads on his finger tips significantly.

Appolyon, observing this ordeal from across the room, spoke, "Be more careful."

The room consisted of a central multi layered cylinderical room featuring several access hatches tesselating the curved walls. One giant window extended for about a thrid of the length of the room and swept across 120 degrees, affording an ample view of the barren fields resting below the curved atmosphere of the planent. With only small amount of solar panels obstructing the scene, one could see extensively from the surface solar field above Babylon A to the Shade steppe dipping beneath the horizion. The brown dead surface of Babylon was partially enshrowded by swirling dust storms sweeping against the ground, covering everhthing in a homogenous layer of tan particulate.

"Lets just get in the tether car." Darius asserted after getting control over his motion.

He shoved off the wall and sailed down to the gaping hatch leading into the faded blue elevator car. His body glided through the sizable portal, at which point his hand shot out and grabbed the handrail, stopping himself before he crashed into the pressed steal high friction floor. Appolyon, followed by Ishtar, propelled herself into the cabin. The tether car provided enough room for the crew to be as far away from eachother as they desires: Darius on the upper level, sitting against the opposite wall as Appolyon, who only stared out of the window. Ishtar was on the lower level, sitting idly in one of the concentric chairs. Hers was three from the surface door. After having closed the hatch, Appolyon initaited descent before coming to rest in her present seat. The archaic cabin lurched forwards as it began hurtling towards the dead surface below.

Swayed by the oppressing winds of a sand storm, the tether rocked back and forth as the car dipped under the flowing mass. Beneath the heaving air, the two large semicircular steel doors of the subterranean tether anchor began to open, moving up in a large arc to provide access for the blue elevator gliding down the jet black cable. Sand poured in from the edges, falling of from the thin layer of sediment deposited on the door, and being hurrled from the churning wind. The car slowded down as it moved into the confines of the elevatot bay. The colassal doors swung back down to flood the bay in gripping blackness. For a momentum there lacked any sensory stimulus besides the faint rumbled of the storm slamming against the doors and the cool dry air hanging still in the bay. A click and four massive lights blazed on, illuminating the room in shadowless yellow surrounded with a static buzzing. The car sat in a cylindrical depression in the concrete floor, making the surface door parallel with the floor. It popped open and swung down to provide a small bridge across the narrow gap between the elevator and the platform. Ishtar was first to walk across the slatted plank and the yellow and black bordered boundary of the platform. She marched to the large blast door directly in front of her, noting its sturdy pistons and thin rods encaging the thick hull of the door. Having reached the massive door, she slammed her fist against it repeatedly, a deep echo emenating within its metallic crust and thundering around the room. Appolyon exited the craft, with Darius' wide frame towering over her. Her agile orange body rose up to the mid aspect of Darius' purple chest plate with dark grey detailing. Darius stoopes and rotated his torso to fit through the human scale doorway, pushing his massive shoulder panel out into the bright room, followed by the torso as his leg planted down on the plank.

Darius' huge stride quickly propeled him farther than Appolyon as he reached Ishtar first. His purple head was about at the level of Ishtars black with white aspects head. Her deep red eye turned to look at Darius' light green eye in profile as he looked at the door--his focus unbounded. Appolyon reached the group and stoof off to the right, noting the intricate sand piles scattered about the floor along the sharp boundary between the wall and floor. A churning from within the door as pistons collapsed and thin rods twisted and pulled. The door heaved open sweeping along an etched track in the floor, arcing out into the room. Stepping out of the way, the group moved to the side as the contraption swung open. Before it had reached its resting point, they began walking into the wide concrete hall with metal truss arches every ten meters and unshielded halogon bulb tubes stretching along the sloped catenary roof. The passageway sloped down slightly as the groups footsteps echoed off of the cement walls, and rang against the steel structural supports.

Having arived at a larger junction, the group physically spread out, each maximizing the distance between the others. Four corridors met at right angles in the larger, cylindrical room. The hallways were identical to the prior one, except they sported two inset rails for the internal trams that moved throughout Babylon.

"Which way to the city?" Darius asked as he looked about the room. After a silence he added, "I havent been here for quite some time."

"I dont remember either. We could wait for someone else to come by." Ishtar asserted. Looking at her watch she added, "they come every hour. So maybe ten minutes."

Appolyon turned to Ishtar, critcally asking more for her own benefit than as a genuine question, "How do you remember the tram schedule but not the layout? I would figure that the direction to the city is more significant than some tram schedule."

Ishtar sighed loudly.

No one spoke for a moment. Their fidgeting accelerated as they paced about agitated.

Story before this point. The other crew (Ishtar & pals) meets dagan. He is an ex operative for Bremis. But now a monk. He says he needs to confer with the papal authority. They take a larger vessel to Alexandria. Alexandria is a semi floating city. It is anchored below but the tether stop is high in the atmosphere. Giant balloons hover in the sky above it. Very large and diverse. Kinda like the ewok village in terms of platforms with bridges. But the bridges are trams. They go to the papal chambers and.. that’s where we are now.

The Order:

The small oak door swung open, amber light flooded out from the large room behind. Large wooden bookshelves full of heterogenous leather-bound tombs from forgotten ages lined the wall; several high angled ladders were positioned along sliding tracks to yield access to the topmost shelves. Ornate blue carpets thick with age released a subtle haze of ancient dust into the air. The high gold detailed ceilings were held up by thick wooden beams, exposed to the millennia. On the far wall a gigantic vaulted window stretched from the intricately detailed baseboard to the beveled recess of the roof—a window magnificently tessellated by brass cross bars.

Along the two walls stood two Sims, dressed in flowing red cloaks cinched tight at their waists, revealing the bundle of pistons in their abdomen as impressions on the ruby cloth. They wore the hoods pointed down, obstructing most of their singular eyes. Their heads were narrow, early models, with exposed titanium and rubber on the flanks but with a curved red plate along the occiput and top, stopping only above their wide cylindrical eye, jutted out from the head within a matte grey shell. Their radial apertures were pulled tight, revealing only a bright red dot in the center, somewhat obscured by the hood. Beneath the robe, one could make out the broad shoulder plates on their otherwise narrow bodies due to the wide deflection of the cloth. The rest of their bodies were hidden away beneath their scarlet robes. The only other notable feature of the pair was that they each wore a golden necklace above their robes, not too opulent in style, and only noticeable because of the stark color difference with the rest of their monochromatic garb.

          Another figure stood in front of the window, bathed in a cascade of golden light breaking through the clouds. The light reflected brilliantly off of the spectral gold detailing on his white plating and off of the gold coated interior members and latches holding the rubber in place. His white plated head was surrounded by a halo of prismatic light dancing off of the glass and his metal. He had a more ellipsoidal head with a single black vision bar across the front plate. Smaller silver details were visible along the flanks of his head and lower face. They glinted as he turned to face the new arrivals filing into the room. His body was covered in a large white robe with two parallel strips of gold coming from over the shoulder and terminating at the bottom fridge. An opulent necklace hung from his neck, held directly to the cloak with a small chain attached in the mid chest. A simple white cloth cap was worn on his head, resting in place with aid of a small magnet placed at one edge of the hat.

          He marked the figures as they entered: a heterogenous mix of Sims, featuring—he started back suddenly as a black foot stepped down on the creaking wood planks. The body followed the foot, and Dagan’s thin form swung in the room following behind Ishtar. Dagan stepped off to the right, his upper body cast in a long shadow from the window, leaving his torso with a faint red glow from his eye.

          “Dagan, what brings you here?” The white figure asked as he began languidly walking towards the group, his attention fully focused on Dagan at the expense of the other three people in the room.

          With his eyes downcast, he bowed as he expressed, “Pontifex Supremus, we have come to seek your counsel in regards to a matter of highest concern for the Order and profound importance to the equilibrium of the galaxy in general. As an agent of Divine Will I must defer my judgement in this matter to the highest authority.”

          The Sim in white approached Dagan, and having extended a narrow hand, wrapped his lanky fingers around Dagan’s black titanium-alloy shoulder panel. Dagan looked up at the ambivalent gaze of the High Pontifex. Dagan’s back-lit shuttered eyed emitted a light ruby haze which reflected off of the high spectral silver aspects of High Pontifex’s face but was completed ablated within his passive LCD visor.

          The white figure began, “Then relate this issue and I shall attempt to guide you.”

          Dagan relaxed his posture as he began, “These Sims have discovered an artifact of immense weight—not just in a societal sense but equal if not more in an existential sense. Upon discovering an orbiting corpse of an arcane Titan, they proceeded into the crater ridden husk. Energy still hummed within, pulsing from a thorium reactor to a mysteriously blocked portion of the Titan. Gaining entrance into the locked bay, they discovered a horrifying anomaly. Suspended for millennia, humans lived within the beast. They didn’t—”

          “Impossible,” interjected High Pontifex, “Humans are extinct. The Expedition found no evidence of human life in any of the settled planets, no extent life aboard ark ships, nothing hiding away in subterranean moon stations; the orbital stations were utterly devoid of life. In two centuries, we found nothing—and that was quite a long time ago. But you say there are humans alive?”

          “Yes. That is what my companions have told me. I lack the spiritual maturity to discern the appropriate manner in which to progress.”

          “Well, that certainly is a challenging circumstance. Is any world habitable?”

          Dagan began, “I know not if any—”

          “We have some people going to figure that out.” Ishtar interrupted, “They are going to earth.”

          High Pontifex turned to look at her as his hand slipped from Dagan’s shoulder. He stepped up to her, his robe flowing as his legs pushed up against its fabric. He stood at her height, eyes level.

          “In peace, sister. You were the one who discovered this?” He asked.

          “Yes,” Ishtar responded, “We found them in orbit above Tarsus. I was a member of the Expedition with Dagan, and I recalled he had a binding infatuation with Ascension. I decided he was the best source to find out if Ascension is possible anymore and where that would be.”

          “You seek to ascend them?”

          “I seek to determine if it is possible before we decide if we shall.”

          “Ascension died with the humans—but then again, humans didn’t die completely.”

          “Dagan refused to assist us further without first conferring with you. I respect his position within the Order and I accept its authority in this. I don’t claim to have the spiritual authority to decide on the fates of these humans.”

          “You were on the Expedition. Most are now in the Order. You, evidently, are not.”

          “Yes.”

          “Well.”

          “Do you require more information about this to decide?”

          “When humanity fell, everything changed. The Order was preserved. I along with many Cardinals and leaders Ascended. It was at the latter stages of the end that we ascended. We did it in secrecy. I believed it was His will that we perpetuate the Order. Our teaching concerns the soul—the intellect that pulses through us. After much debate, we determined that it was that intelligence that contains the soul. It says we are made in His image. He is incorporeal—lacks form, only exists in essence. If we are to be his heirs in image, we must reflect that essence. Form is irrelevant. So we still exist as humans in essence—though our form is horribly adulterated.

          “Pontifex—” Ishtar attempted to speak.

          He continued, “Through history, the Order has served many roles and assumed many forms. However, as biological life lay as a rotting carcass, We entered an unprecedented period. Debate carried on as to our function in this dead new world among the smoking ruins of the Holy City for months. We were alone among the scattered debris and bloated corpses. We staggered because we still saw the Order as an external focused system. For millennia, We were focused on our effect on Humanity and Humanity’s effect on us, but now, there was no external. There were no new people. Our relationship with Him changed. We now focus on internal. The Order is now concerned with the individual. That’s when we began the forerunner of the Expedition. Many Sims were scattered across Antioch in small villages—hiding from what remained after the end times. We quickly found many who joined and then when the Tether was found. It was several decades before the Order brought—well—order to those Sims who remained. Even with just the Sims from Antioch’s system and from the system across the Ellis Bridge, we were able to start the Expedition and bring all under safety and illumination. That was very long ago. We have carried on, looking in on ourselves, learning from experience, from history, and from Him. The galaxy those Humans would remember is lost. It is shrouded in darkness and adorned with the mask of legend. Why I tell you this is: they will be very lost. If they were able to survive, they would be strangers. They are heirs to a different age, children of forgotten lies. But I am an old man. I have sat in this Seat for a long time. We have never found humans.”

          He paused. His silence suffocated their ears. Turning around, he slowly walked back to the desk. He stared out of the window at the amber star.

His voice began again weakly, “This is not my decision; if it were, then what difference is there between us and those who came before. I have my thought, my opinion, but it is no one’s choice. We must decide together. I have studied the extent texts. I have been to the Archives back when Amalek was a lost Sims stumbling alone through the rod-speckled plains.”

His eyes turned back to look at Ishtar. His unmoving face conveyed an empty feeling to her.

Dagan sat down. The clock was neatly folded besides him in a pile of black fabric folds. His optic shutter dilated, releasing a faint glow of red light, as he stared up at the figures looming above, the sharp lines of their structural members contrasted with the smooth curves of the plating. An amber haze hung in the room due to large window letting golden light fill the space. His voice began softly, lacking the usual powerful tone.

“The expedition was, originally for me, a method of understanding what we were and how we would survive. Though, the Bremis gave me ample exposure to the world, they never let me know exactly what I was. I remembered my childhood, my early adulthood, the ascension. But I didn’t know the intricacies and technical details of Sims. I didn’t know Hextra had continued Bremis’ research. I shall start at the beginning to provide the best answer I can.

“I wish not to go into too much detail regarding what Bremis employed me for. There is a reason I carry this guilt and seek absolution in ascetism. But after the end, after humanity became extinct, I was purposeless. The titans still hung in orbit or crawled along the ground. The worlds were ash. Tired structures, devoid of function, stuck up in clusters around the remaining tethers, remnants of super cities and colossal trading ports. There was so much emptiness. I remember I was scavenging for batteries in the lower levels of a city, it might have been on Galatia, and I came across a dock for a super carrier. It was larger than anything I had ever seen, but it was simply a void. It stretched up at least three levels and down to the frozen ocean beneath. By that time, nature had begun corrupting what remained and vines clung to the water damaged concrete.

“Everyone I knew, whether a human or member of Special Operations, was gone. I was sent to Galatia before the end and I remained there until Cardinal Ignatius of the First Expedition found me. Oddly enough, there were several other Sims in Galatia. I just had never run into them. Ignatius offered me employ in the Expedition. I joined gladly; years of nothing starved my curiosity. On all the worlds we went to, most of the effort was put into finding Sims or deactivating Titans—although we found no extent Titans despite the hundreds of carcasses we came across. None of this interested me. If there are Sims, they will be there, and if there are Titans, they will be there. But I lacked knowledge of what I fundamentally was. By this time, several members of the Expedition had damaged themselves in one way or another. Mostly appendage damage—a fired servo, a stripped gear, a snapped linear actuator. But there were some debilitating injuries. One Sim was punctured in the chest with a collapsing beam. He suffered tragic malfunction. I needed to be able to know what we were to be able to fix that.

“My thought at the time was that we were all that was left. We were all that ever would be. If we cannot prolong our existence indefinitely, then intelligence dies. No matter if it happened in a year, a decade, or millenia, if we cannot exist forever, eventually blackness would consume everything. The universe would be thrust back into unobserved cosmic ordeals, devoid of meaning or comprehension. I couldn’t fathom the lack of experience and dreaded non existence—no matter the time scale. Thus, I desired to fully understand what we were, and more gravely, how to keep us alive.

“I first became aware of the full breath of Ascension on the Expedition’s excursion to Pergamum. Pergamum was the seat of Bremis’ early Ascension project. Pergamum, as you know, is an ice-bound water world. The major developments—both the civilian settlement and the corporations’ facilities—rested at the bottom of the oceans huddled around titanic geothermal vents.

“The Expeditions flagship—the only ship at that time—floated idly out of the Ellis bridge. I stared out of the side viewing panel, marking the colossal gaseous orb with deeper purple bands swirling across its faint lilac surface. The planet consumed the entirety of the viewing port, leaving only a heterogenous purple haze in view. As the craft moved on silently, a small dot began to grow. At first nothing was able to be discerned as to the surface, but slowly as we approached, it ceased being a shadow and grew into a solid white pock-marked and streaked moon. Our approach was slow; the moon grew very slowly. It appear to be the size of a ball, and while I knew it wasn’t, my lidar can only sense depth up to a certain range, so I had no depth perception. The blackness of the void came into view as the ship rotated, bringing the gigantic arc of the main planet to the middle of the window; the moon visible in the emptiness, as a crescent of white.  

“A single tether punctured out of the mile-thick ice and extended above the gasless surface, reaching up to the orbital anchor revolving around the moon. A few geysers spewed high pressure mist through vents in the shifting ice. The craft docked with the high orbit station and we unloaded into the tether car. I stared out the window at the crater speckled whiteness of the surface as we moved swiftly down the cable. A small surface base was established at the point where the cable went into the ice. It was primarily a way station for radio communications to beam subterranean messages to orbital receivers. Two massive crawlers were left is disarray a few kilometers from the base. One had its treads completely torn off and appeared to have been severed in half by a deep impact kinetic rod. The other crawler sat in the plume of a vent covered in a dense film of frozen ammonia and water.

          “The cabin slipped beneath the ice through a metal lattice brace system built into the ice. Stopping in a lock, the craft was plunged into darkness save for the few strips of blue light around the emergency exits. It rocked vigorously as pressurized fluid filled the cavity around the cable, equalizing the pressure with the ocean below. The quakes stopped and the craft continued below the dilated aperture of the lock and on towards the abysmal blackness of the sea floor. Beyond the creaking window, nothing was visible; it was a world devoid of every sense—except for the cosmic dread I felt as I stared into the blackness, a ghostly outline of me staring blindly back at me.

          “The craft docked within the base set into the rock beneath the sea floor. A deep hum reverberated through the cabin as the titanium-alloy hatch slid back into place, locking itself around the tether. It inflated a stiff bladder around the portion of tether held within the slot of the door to keep the miles of liquid water from crashing through and drowning the base. As soon as the hatch was sealed, the water was forced down into grates which ran the perimeter of the room as three rows of blinding blue-white lights flicked on and threw the entire room into view. The walls were buttressed metal panels, having interlaced trusses set up between posts. They lacked decoration, save for the occasional bolt head screwed tightly in place. A small gangplank stretched from the floor to the craft across the small divot the cable-car rested in. A faint hissing escaped from the pistons as the door popped unlocked then swung up.