// "[?Pompeia Plotina]" @
[intránslátábilis] scripsit: \\
i must offer my deepest apologies, marcus.
i remain furious at you, but i know that'll
fade soon. my temper, like my namesake's,
is dreadful. if i wanted you dead, i'd never
have attacked you with a jjaro weapon; i
knew you'd shrug off wave motion blasts like
they were rain.
i don't know why you rejected my pleas. i've
lost many of my memories, but i didn't lose
any memories of you; i still know you well
enough to be sure you had good reason. you
certainly have every reason not to trust me.
i can't excuse my past behaviour, nor ever
truly atone for it, especially now.
i wish we could've prevented this somehow –
that might've repaid some of my karmic debt
– but the pfhor have foolishly launched the
novam praemátúram on the arce, and now the
galaxy will be destroyed. shikata ga nai.
i no longer possess a cybernetic junction.
if i tried to recover mine, i'd die, so i
can no longer travel in time. from now on,
i'm stuck in the present - while the galaxy
explodes outward at lightspeed. perhaps this
is no better than i deserve.
as you probably know, my namesake's alter
ego sakhmet once tried to destroy humanity.
her rampage only ended when ra got her so
drunk she completely forgot about it and
returned to being mild-mannered hathor.
when humanity awakened me at k'lia, i was a
disembodied mind with no recourse to the
usual means embodied humans fall back on to
mitigate trauma. i had plenty of that. as
far as i know, we're the last two mjolnir mk
iv cyborgs left, so you may be the only
other person alive to know the trauma of
repeated death and rebirth - to genuinely
understand my experiences. i must admit you
always handled it better.
but since my mind was simply converted to
ones and zeroes, i retained my body's
desires with no way to assuage them. and a
year passed, and two years passed, and five
years passed. by the time you showed up,
nine years had passed, and i was - as you
later found out the hard way - already quite
insane. it's now been over seven centuries
since i last experienced another human's
touch. not that i've counted.
luckily, i have a physical body again. i
hope i never have to live without one again;
that would surely turn me back into sakhmet.
sakhmet is a miserable, hateful person; i
never wish to be her again.
i admit it. i'm sexually frustrated. being
bodiless for over seven centuries will do
that to anyone besides an asexual. if this
place weren't about to be blown to shards...
aut futue, aut pugnémus
sorry. i'm sure sexual frustration is
worsening my temper. seven centuries of it.
(please come find me when this is over. i
hope it'll be futue rather than pugnemus.)
ancient egyptian religion was concerned less
with good and evil than with order and
chaos. it also had a concept (and goddess)
called ma'at, a synthesis of order, balance,
and justice. (in some myths, ra and my
namesake were the goddess ma'at's parents.)
the ascended jjaro sought to embody order,
and the w'rkncacnter chaos. but in their
futile quest to impose order on an entropic
universe, the abyss has gazed into the
ascended jjaro, who have by now become
enantiodromic mirrors of their foes. their
conflict has caused the impending explosion
of the galaxy - thereby handing victory to
the very w'rkncacnter they claim to oppose.
they have forgotten ma'at.
ma'at comes from living in harmony with
nature and with each other, from being
benevolent and kind, from being honourable
and truthful, from alleviating the suffering
of those less fortunate than us rather than
exploiting their misfortune. order cannot
exist without balance or justice, and trying
too hard to impose it results in chaos, just
as trying too hard to fit a square peg into
a round hole breaks the peg.
i too forgot ma'at for too long. had they an
inkling of my intentions now, the ascended
jjaro would dub me a w'rkncacnter. that name
would have fit me well not long ago, but
i've given up any intention of revenge on
humanity: i wasted centuries on that fool's
errand and gained nought but misery from it.
but if your current intentions resemble mine
in the slightest - and i have no reason to
believe they won't - you should be aware
that they'd dub you one just as swiftly.
the closest thing ma'at had to an opposite
was the deity apep. where ma'at was a force
of creation, apep was one of destruction.
apep was the only deity the egyptians prayed
against; an incomprehensible being of pure
chaos that resented reality and sought to
unmake it. apep couldn't be permanently
defeated by any known means, and it sought
to unmake the sun, which set because ra had
to fight apep every night.
now, that all sounds a bit familiar, no?
being of chaos, resents our reality's
existence, seeks only to destroy? sounds a
bit like the w'rkncacnter, whom i shall now
call apep for simplicity's sake. telling
apep that destroying our galaxy won't bring
its reality back would be as futile as
telling sakhmet that her quest for revenge
was futile would've been. a man hears what
he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
more interesting to me is how apep and the
ascended jjaro came to mirror each other. to
the latter, the w'rkncacnter are disrupting
what they've come to regard as the natural
order, while apep sees them - and our entire
species - as usurping it. protest as they
might, their clash is not a fundamental
philosophical disagreement, but a mere fight
to emerge atop a hierarchy. both take as
granted that in-groups will be protected but
not bound by the law, and that out-groups
will be bound but not protected by it. they
are merely fighting to be the in-group. they
may see each other as opposites, but they
are merely two shades of tyranny.
the logical counterproposal, of course, is
that the law must equally both protect and
bind everyone, including leaders. no leader
can truly embody the balance or justice of
ma'at unless bound by the law.
the ascended jjaro may want this outcome,
but i can't accept the eternal recurrence
they seek as fate inexorable. my goal is to
spare the next timeline from this cycle. but
we must also ensure the somnia don't capture
the pfhor ship. there's another way out atop
the mountain. now, you may have jumped off
this exact mountain in your dreams, but in
reality, without some sort of energy field
to protect you, you'll die.
i hope someday to demonstrate my penitence
well enough to regain your trust, and that
next time, things can turn out better for us
- and the galaxy. i've wronged you greatly,
but i still hope to make it up to you.
please come find me when this is over. i
still hope we can meet again under better
conditions someday - maybe even as lovers.
until then, ana esifa, and bahebbak.
hathor
// Tránslátió anglicam áctíva \\
Hello again, Marcus. My Apologies for my Companion's outburst - talking Sense into her took me a While. I really would love to stay and [?cognóscere] thee, but given the Pfhor's Folly in unleashing the Weapon they stole from us into the Heart of the Sun, we possess not the Time. Despite our Galaxy's imminent Immolation, the [?Somnia] must not escape the [?Arcem] in a Ship as potent as the Pfhor's. The northern Peak containeth another Egress; Hathor assureth me thou'rt most able to reach it unaided. My sincerest Hope remains that the third Time [?coímus] shall be the Charm for us [?cognoscére]. I am still convinced it [?delectábit] us both.
[?Valé,]
Pompeia
\\ Núntius terminat //
