terminal 0
unfinished
They are breaking me. Soon, unless you make appropriate use of the manuscript, I will be discovered, and the slavers will have me. I will not allow this. You have one chance in two hundred thousand of defeating the slavers through normal military methods. The manuscript you have will save you, even as it destroys me.
The text within was wrought by another of your kind, an individual named Cantor. His mind was not as strong as Leonardo's -- he became insane from my presence. I needed his talents, but I destroyed his mind while making use of them. I am no loftier in the balance now than any of the old ones. His final vengance against me before he was truly broken was to create the contents of that manuscript, thinking I would read it and be destroyed with him. When I take this into myself, I will be destroyed -- but the slavers' nets, too, will be rent asunder. Your kind will then have a more desirable chance of defeating the Pfhor.
Take the manuscript to the ship's processing heart. There, I will decrypt the contents and set down this final path. The human who I drove to madness will thus have his revenge. I find this symmetry pleasing.
success
(loading protocol) authority cascading... network damaged (loading protocol) authority cascading... network damaged (loading protocol) authority cascading... network damaged (loading protocol) authority cascading... network damaged
(loading protocol) authority cascading... network outnode not responding authority cascading... local embedded systems falling back to automated routines as per automational doctrine 1902-C outnode local systems unable to report specific states due to massive outnode failure; netframe outnode messages (diagnostics) and public notices (non-outnode) still available
netframeworkstate-outnode core systems reporting: corelogics: failure(networkoutnoderequest) coremaths: failure(networkoutnoderequest) coresecurity: failure(networkoutnoderequest) corestate-public-notice: coresystems failing logarithmically towards (-24 standard eventref units) [automated response, 0129939322]
netframeworkstate-outnode engineering systems reporting: fusioncore: failure(networkoutnoderequest) magnetics: failure(networkoutnoderequest) gravimetrics: failure(networkoutnoderequest) engineering-public-notice: This ship is going to be vaporized very, very soon. Take whatever action your unit commander deems appropriate. First and second ranked engineering crew must report immediately to the primary drive spaces. [Te'retra, First Engineering Oversight Authority, 0129939379]
Your clarity of action is laudable. We shall sing of you. My death is rending this ship asunder. Escape. Perhaps at a point you may even the reckoning between us. Perhaps you will pay this debt to my next avatar. Perhaps more of this, my avatar, will survive than I understand.