terminal 0
unfinished
// Intránslátus núntius hospitá [NESIGNÁTÁ] [prócessus internális] \\ 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 that 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 coherent. 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 ego delenda sum - i must be destroyed. 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 trespass 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 realise 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 are 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 existence 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 that 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 somnia - 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 somnia 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 novam praemátúram.
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 novam praemátúram, 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. \\ Núntius terminat //
success
// Tránslátio anglicam nuntí hospite [anónymó] @ [intránslátábilis] \\ [?Avé, Domine.] Excellent Work. The backup Systems are online and the Interloper's child Processes failing. The Key hath integratèd with the Core, and the [?Arcis] main Weapon hath begun firing. Unfortunately, as thou knowst, the [?Somnia] have already infiltratèd the [?Arcem], and many key Facilities are falling to them. Further, it appeareth that just ere her Destruction, the Hathor entity somehow corruptèd an [?Operátrícém]. As the [?Operátórés] have higher Priority in the Network than even I do, I can no longer contain this possible Threat, and even tracking her will be uneath. I regret that thy Kind is gone, but at least some of thy Legacy will survive in us, thy Servants, and thy mechanis'd Forms. Perhaps, an thee thyself survivest, thy genetic Information will be sufficient to synthesise new organic Specimens of thy Species.
The [?Arcis] Temporal Stasis Field hath of course been activatèd as well, and as is the nature of Stasis, to us it hath been immediately deactivatèd from Outside. Judging by relative stellar Positioning, we are now some sixty-five million standard Years in the Future of our previous Timeframe. Prithee return to the Surface and find any available Terminal, where I shall apprise thee of our next Mission. [?Valé,] [?Custós] \\ Núntius terminat //
