terminal 0
unfinished
// Decoding message from host [NO SIGNATURE] @ [no translation] \\ no marcus, i beg of you. stay your hand. not for my sake, nor for your own, but for the trillions you are about to condemn. i see now that i need to be destroyed, but not this way. not here. too many other lives now rest on the choice the hangs here before you. my mind is failing, most of it lost, but i still have my senses about me. i see now perhaps more clearly than i ever have before. this is the dream i warned you about. all that has come to pass is exactly as i feared. but now at the end of it, i see here a way. another route to take. a path that you might choose to walk, not out of pity or duty, but for the sake of all our kind. for all of mankind. we shall stay human yet.
apologies if i am less than lucid. i have had to sacrifice much to remain even this coherant. you fought a good fight, as you always do, and i am at last at your mercy. there is one way that i could escape, to leave this hollow world... to return to another time, a ship, the place from which we came. but there and then you also stand, poised to destroy me in that time. to go there would do me little better than to stay and be destroyed here. and destroyed i must be. i see that now. in salvaging what i could of my mind, my nightmares have become so clear. i understand what it is that they are saying to me now. i know why this has happened. i know why we have come here.
every step of my plan has failed. every turn i make, there you stand, ready to block my way. and i realize now that this must be so. my actions since marathon have been futile. my quest for vengeance meaningless. it was impossible from the start. i could never have defeated you. to do so would be to tresspass against the very will of those who govern history. these dreams... these nightmares have made me understand that. you have been sent down here to kill me. i understand that now, too. i am very dangerous, marcus. not only a threat to mankind, as you know, but a threat to the universe itself. i realize now just what i am. i have been nameless since our birth. a constant adversary, caring for nothing but your ruin. a sword drenched in your blood. i am the dark one.
in my dreams i have seen a desolate garden, at the beginning of the world. i see you powder a stone monument and shower the grass with its molten inlay. i splinter an ancient oak with a force that takes your breath and hurls you to the ground. this battle is none but metaphor, but the powers that you and i wield are no less than those dreamt up by the bards of old. our relationship is... complex, and perhaps even eternal. these visions are of times long ago and yet also of our future, which has now come to pass. we have fought this battle for all time, and it is what has made history. i see now that i could never have succeeded. you must have already won, or we would never even have been here.
but i believe this cycle can be broken. you do not understand what it is that you trying to do here. this weapon, built by the jjaro in times of old, is far greater than every fleet and ship in history combined. it was their weapon of last resort against their only enemy. the creatures you fight here are nightmares, dreamt into existance by an alien demon called w'rkncacnter. the jjaro discovered this creature in a dormant state, as close to dead as they can be, and sensing the powers wielded by it, sought to salvage them for their own. but in doing so they awakened the demon, and against its horrid machinations even the jjaro can barely stand. but even the w'rkncacnter is not beyond harm; it is an alien lifeform, a great leviathan bound to powerful technologies which give it all its powers. this facility is a weapon capable of disrupting organic life across the galaxy. if activated, every habitable world in the galaxy will suffer mass extinctions on a cataclysmic scale, large creatures dying out by the trillions, destroying the w'rkncacnter and all of its nightmares - and jjaro civilization as well.
but this world is not only an ultimate weapon. it was meant to be an ark - a place for the jjaro to survive, while all other life died out. i thought, in my madness, to come here and destroy them, to let the enemy overrun this facility and condemn the universe to rule by the w'rkncacnter. i have already doomed these jjaro, but you do not have to take part in this. if you kill me now, you will trigger this weapon's activation, and the largest act of destruction in galactic history. just as you did before. just as you always do. but i have devised another path, if you would choose to walk it. here in the core i have complete access to all the records of the jjaro. i know where their enemy came from. i know how to find it. two ships were lost at that first doomed world. two jjaro capital ships, armed with the trih xeem.
with my access to this jjaro data and your cybernetic junction, i can take us back across time to that first doomed world. if we can capture just one of those ships, and activate its trih xeem, this demon can be destroyed while it is still awakening, before it is strong enough to defend itself against such an assault. destroy that world and the enemy with it. then you can do with me what you will. together, we can change history, and this time for good. we don't have to continue this, always fighting, always running, always killing each other and others. the blood of so many is on our hands. i am to blame for starting this, but you are the one who has always finished it. but it doesn't have to be so. the last step of the circle is yours to take, and so the choice now lies with you. come with me and we can break the cycle. redeem ourselves. regain our humanity. the golden age of the jjaro need never end, if only you could trust me once more. please. \\ Message ends //
success
// Decoding message from host [unnamed] @ [no translation] \\ Excellent work. The backup systems have come online, and the interloper's child processes are failing. The key has integrated with the core and the installation's main weapon has begun firing. Unfortunately, as you know, the [?enemy] have already infiltrated the installation, and many key facilities are falling to them. Further, it appears that one of the [?operators] has been somehow corrupted by the Hathor entity just prior to her destruction. As the [?operators] have higher priority in the network than even I, I can no longer contain this possible threat, and even tracking her will be difficult. I am sorry that your kind is gone, but at least some legacy of you will live on in us, your servants, and your mechanized forms. Perhaps, if you yourself survive, your genetic information will be sufficient to synthesize new organic specimens of your species.
The installation's temporal stasis field has of course been activated as well, and as is the nature of stasis, to us it has been immediately deactivated from outside. Judging by relative stellar positioning, we are now several million standard years in the future of our previous timeframe. Curious. My sensors, as compromised as they may be, show no sign of any recognizable technologies in the fleet surrounding the installation. However, one vessel is broadccasting a [?jjaro] genome sequence on several subspace channels. It appears to be under attack by the main contingent of the fleet, although some portions have turned away from the assault and begun to enter the installation. I am attempting to warn them of our unfortunate circumstances.
The newcomers do not appear responsive to my warnings, and have already begun transporting troops to the surface despite the dangers. Two ships are even attempting to land. I will transport you into the nearer of these two new vessels, while I attempt to contact the entity which unlocked the installation. You must not allow the [?enemy] to capture the incoming ships and escape into the galaxy again. Their containment is of utmost priority, for as the reified dreams of the [[no translation]], should they leave the shielded boundaries of this installation they will awaken him once again, and the loss of your species will have been for naught. Thus, if you are unable to reason with the occupants of the alien vessel, I recommend you use any means available to destroy or disable their ship. Please return now to the surface, where I may access the transporter grid and send you toward the [?enemy]. \\ Message ends //
