PERSONAL LOG: Marcus Jones Chief Security Officer, U.E.S.C. Marathon ENTRY DATE: 25 July C.E. 2905 (Part 1) Temporary Quarters, K'lia
"You are destiny." I saw these words in a vision, or they were spoken to me in a dream. I've always been a daydreamer, reflecting on the past or musing on things that may never be. But lately, my visions have been so much more vivid - whole nightmares of doomed worlds, of alien gods and demons, flashing behind my eyes in an instant, like another life I might've lived. And here I am now, daydreaming about dreaming. Metadreaming. Heh. Even the deja vu is worse now. It seems like everything I do, I've already done before, just differently. At least this place is new. Never in a hundred years would I expect to find myself on the last world of the now-extinct S'pht - least of all, in orbit over a ruined, desolate Earth. In a hundred years... I vanish for almost a century and look at what fate befalls humanity....
2905. Damn. Five centuries ago seems like just yesterday... the last time I saw the cities of Mars - or ever will, since they're now nothing but twisted slag amidst the dusty red sands. They say no one won the war. The Pfhor Empire is shattered, their civilization decimated by the S'pht rebellion. The S'pht themselves are also gone; the 'Kr put down to end S'bhuth's madness, and the rest exterminated by the Pfhor. And here we are now, one ruined world left, clinging to this unnatural second moon as our only hope of salvation.
But neither we nor the Pfhor are gone; they are merely set back, and we even more so. And when our kinds again collide, I doubt humanity shall triumph. Apparently, enough people shared that fear to spend nearly all our resources finding a solution. And they found the key to our restitution here on K'lia: the greatest technology ever created, Jjaro 'magic' that could unravel the very fabric of space and alter the course of history... And to think, without the message I helped send 92 years ago, all that effort would've been futile. Leela. The poor girl deserved a better fate. But her last legacy, the message from the Marathon, streaking at lightspeed through the stars, warning of a threat now passed, rekindled new hope, for she spoke also of ten Battleroids at Tau Ceti IV - cyborg warriors the likes of which hadn't been seen since I left Mars.
// "Hathor" @ klia.ai.core wrote: \\ Hello Marcus. All ready to go? I'm glad. Our first mission won't take too long, you shouldn't need more than a standard sidearm and a few batteries. We discussed the plan a hundred times, but protocol dictates another review before we leave: - Return to the Marathon in 2794, at the start of the Pfhor invasion. - Find the other eight Battleroids and bring them to 2905. Give them the rest and refit you've received here.
- Return to key times in history. Surgically alter the timeline to create a future free of the Pfhor. Transport K'lia and the surviving humans to that timeline. Everything check out? Good. The upper brass are restless. We bet everything on this, and they want us to leave as soon as possible. Less time spent in uncertainty. Ironic, isn't it? If the Junction works as hoped, we have all the time in the galaxy.
Still, no reason to keep everyone waiting, least of all ourselves. I want to make history at just the right moment, though I feel like you're the only one that actually groks why. Eleventy-one years since... Well, you were there, too. Our little private joke. Give me a second to transfer my core program into your suit's network... \\ Message ends //
// "Hathor" [internal process] wrote: \\ There we go. Now I get to be inside you! Not how we usually do it, right? Sorry... we can reminisce about old times later. The data I have is insufficient to transport us directly into the Marathon - we'd be lucky not to end up halfway embedded in a wall. We'll aim for the empty space outside the ship, and from there we'll recalibrate and transport inside. Seven seconds until 8:20. Let's go. \\ Message ends //
PERSONAL LOG: Marcus Jones Chief Security Officer, U.E.S.C. Marathon ENTRY DATE: 25 July C.E. 2905 (Part 2) Temporary Quarters, K'lia
So my kind is once again called upon as a last resort. But this is certainly a novel use. The Cybernetic Junction was Jjaro technology's acme, and every Mjolnir Mk IV contains one: a "surrogate soul", so to speak, and just what K'lia needed. Humanity destroyed K'lia's Junction to end S'bhuth's rampage, but K'lia's technology requires a Junction. Luckily, they found Hathor, a Mk IV like me - a sister, in a sense: one of the nine who died at Tau Ceti, and the only one whose Junction survived enough to be recovered. Her mind is now the core of K'lia's systems. She deciphered how the Jjaro technology functions and how much it can do. A Cybernetic Junction grants the power to transfer subspace data streams, or what our techs dub its 'perceived host', to any point across space, any moment in time, or
any discernable parallel timeline - the power, in effect, to shape reality as the user sees fit, roaming spacetime at will. Hathor coordinated our first efforts to change history. We tried sending tactical data to our past selves in recent times where we possessed ansibles. But it was always futile; nothing ever saved us from S'bhuth's madness. No tactical advantage we could offer ourselves ever offset the loss of our S'pht allies and the damage their rampage caused. We still don't know why S'bhuth went mad, nor his objectives. What could drive such an ancient and purportedly enlightened mind into such utter violence? We wouldn't even have managed to stop him without Leela's aid. If only we hadn't needed it - perhaps then, she'd have survived.
Humanity's only apparent option was to send K'lia itself across time, but that was too great of a risk. Although we'd have been able to aid past humans in times before ansibles, we'd have suffered catastrophic, irreversible losses if K'lia were destroyed. We needed another Cybernetic Junction. Then Hathor remembered me, the Mjolnir Mk IV missing from Tau Ceti when the Pfhor nuked it to bedrock. She tracked me to Lh'owon through Robert Blake's accounts. She scanned S'bhuth's old databanks, now adjacent to her mind, and found sensor logs from a S'pht'Kr ship at the Last Battle of Lh'owon. She found me there, on a Jjaro space station, reading the last words from Durandal I suspect I'll ever see. "Go," he said, and so I went - picked up by Hathor's ansible call and dragged through somewhere outside time, to this alien moon over a ruined Earth some ninety-five years in the future. If I keep this up, I may even live to see the end of time.
PERSONAL LOG: Marcus Jones Chief Security Officer, U.E.S.C. Marathon ENTRY DATE: 25 July C.E. 2905 (Part 3) Temporary Quarters, K'lia
A fierce battle between the S'pht'Kr and the Pfhor occurred a millennium ago at the site of my lodgings. They conceal some historical curiosities, though. S'bhuth left much of K'lia in ruins when he went mad, but this facility looks no different than it did a thousand years ago. We have pictures to prove it. S'bhuth seemed to have some sentimental attachment to it. There are no plausible theories for this facility's strategic importance, either, and its only appearances in historical records relate to the battle. None of this is likely to be important, but thinking about it has helped keep my mind off the dreary state of the present. But people have helped with that, too.
Being among humans again after so long traveling the stars in stasis and fighting on alien worlds is odd. I've met countless fascinating people here, and it's reminded me of the stakes of this conflict. For the first time in ages, I've even made friends that aren't computers. The people on K'lia are so kind - they'll share whatever you ask them for. Perhaps crises give us an instinctive urge to band together. My reputation has preceded me, of course, so maybe my experience has been atypical. I'm something of a celebrity, which I find surreal; I've never sought personal glory, nor think I deserve it just for fighting. But my fame has had its perks. I have no particular desire to kiss and tell, but I must admit having physical contact with other human beings again has done wonders to relieve my stress, and I'm flattered how many people have approached me.
Among everyone I've spoken to, only Bast distrusts Hathor. I have no idea what to make of that; Hathor has been so charming, open, and helpful throughout my stay, and everyone else loves her. When I asked Bast why she doesn't trust Hathor, she made an odd remark about "the myths of our people" and refused to explain further. I read up on Egyptian mythology afterwards, which just confused me further. I'm sure that's not her real reason, but certain topics make her visibly uncomfortable, and she's so sweet I can never bring myself to pry.
Bast really doesn't want me to go on this mission, and seems to think she's personally failed by not dissuading me from it. Her last words to me began, "This will all sound crazy now, but it'll make perfect sense someday, when this is all over." Then she spoke in a foreign language - maybe Egyptian Arabic, but it sounded like Italian to me. She finished, "If I'm far luckier than I could possibly deserve, you may even find it in yourself to forgive me. I'm so terribly sorry - I wish I could've found a way to prevent this all from happening." I have no idea what any of it means, least of all why she thinks she needs my forgiveness: she's been nothing but wonderful to me.
It seems to me not even a year since Durandal called the Pfhor to Tau Ceti, but over a century has passed for the rest of the galaxy - and three centuries since the Marathon left Mars. The people here at Sol have changed so much in that time, both in accent and in attitude; but once again, it seems I'm their only hope. Maybe those visions about Destiny were right, but I can't let my idle thoughts and imagination go to my head. I've always been a soldier, always done as I was told, never put my own needs first, no matter what price I ultimately pay.
They're calling for me now; Hathor's ready to leave. She's delayed the mission for nearly a month, much to the chagrin of humanity's leaders, and refuses to tell anyone why. But she controls K'lia's systems, so they begrudgingly tolerate her insistence on leaving at this exact time. It seems they simply haven't noticed her flair for dramatic timing. We're leaving at 8:20 AM on July 25, 2905. 111 years ago, 92 lightyears away, the first Pfhor assault on the Marathon began - and history hasn't been the same since.
interlevel teleports
