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thefirstknife · 5 months

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Speaking of weird things in the season already, I'm back with the obsession with names of things in the seasonal activity.

So in Riven's Lair, you get randomly assigned "missions" that change with each run. I believe there's five of them as I've played a lot of Riven's Lair so far and only got these five to rotate. Maybe there will be more in weeks to come!

Anyway, if you look in the top left corner when you start the activity, it will tell you the name of the mission you're on. The names that I've seen so far are:

Polysemy

Apophasis

Synchysis

Enthymeme

Tautology

Long post under:

These aren't random words! They're all related to language and rhetoric, which makes sense with the Ahamkara theme as Ahamkara are very dependent on the way language is used around them.

Polysemy is when words or symbols are capable of having multiple meanings. Apophasis is when you speak about something by denying it or mentioning it by saying it's not required to be mentioned (def check examples on wikipedia if this is confusing). Synchysis is also a way of speaking in a way that deliberately messes up the order of words to confuse or surprise the person you're speaking to. Enthymeme is a type of an argument where you construct a sentence which tells some sort of a fact by omitting the way you came to that conclusion because the fact should be obvious on its own (again, check wiki for examples, it will be easier to understand). And tautology has a meaning in both language and logic; in language, a tautology is a statement that repeats something, adding redundant information and in logic, a tautology is a logical formula in which a sentence is constructed in a way that every interpretation of the sentence is true.

I doubt these words were chosen randomly and there might be more or perhaps more will cycle in during weeks to come. But even with just this, there's a pattern. I'm not sure which meaning of tautology is being used here; possibly the language one because it fits the rest, but the logic interpretation could also be possible.

The first week's mission was also specifically Polysemy:

I assume next weeks we'll probably do other specific ones in some order, which would also mean there should be at least 2 more. I'm wondering if there's some sort of a reason why these specific words were chosen. Obviously they all relate to forms of speaking and language which is the primary way that Ahamkara use to affect reality; speaking in specific terminology and using particular phrases and language forms is important to them and when speaking to them.

But given the involvement of the Vex, it also reminded me of the lore book Aspect in which every chapter is named after grammatical, linguistic and logic terms. Aspect is also specifically related to the Black Garden and Sol Divisive. Not only that, but Aspect deals with, among other things, the fate of the Ishtar scientists and their copies in the Vex Network, and primarily uses Chioma as their main viewpoint, and the whole situation with Neomuna and Veil Logs has returned my interest in this lore book.

I feel like it isn't a coincidence that we've spent essentially the entire year reacquainting ourselves with Chioma and Maya and Ishtar as a whole only to bring back Sol Divisive and the Black Garden back in the final season in this way. As the Veil Logs told us, one of Maya's copies interfered with one of the logs, sending signals, and Chioma, at the end of her life, contacted the Vex presumably to be consumed by the network so she could possibly reunite with one of the copies of Maya in there.

This brought me also to the mysterious signal from Scatter Signal lore tab in which Osiris tracks down some sort of a signal that seems to be talking about the Vex, but spoken in a strange way. So I began thinking that this signal might be coming from Chioma, consumed by the Vex, from the Vex Network, reaching out to the man who's been studying her, living in Neomuna and researching the Veil for months. Specifically, the final Veil Log mentioned a few similar words and phrases being repeated. Specifically, when Osiris mentions that Chioma was researching "the entaglement of Light and Dark" and when Nimbus and Osiris discuss "parallel connections and parallel energy fields;" then in the Scatter Signal message there's mention of how, presumably, the Vex are trying to "move from parallel to entanglement." The Veil Log also talks about how the Witness can communicate through our Ghosts and how that connection might be going both ways; Scatter Signal also mentions "bridging communion with a Voice."

Copies of Chioma and the other scientists (with the help of Praedyth) once tried to use the Black Garden to send a message out of the Vex Network, detailed in Aspect. We don't know if they succeeded (at least in our current timeline). The Black Garden has been a big focus in Lightfall almost out of nowhere in such an immensely world-changing way (with the explanation of the Black Heart), and it will still be important this season with the exotic mission. It's a very pleasing loop of the story; everything started with the Black Garden in D1 and everything just before TFS might end with it. I'm also incredibly intrigued by the fact that the returning weapons from Undying (a season about the Sol Divisive and the Black Garden) have returned with a new perk called nano-munitions: very Neomuna-sounding name. Perhaps certain Ishtar scientists are influencing the Vex or extending a helping hand to us.

The questions that remain: how does this tie back to the Ahamkara? Why are the Vex interested in the Ahamkara? What do the Ahamkara have to do with the Black Garden? What's with all the strange language terminology that deals with double meanings and ways to confuse? Is it just regular Ahamkara shenanigans to trick us? To trick the Vex? Maybe both?

The point is, I don't think this is as simple as Riven just being sad that all the Ahamkara are dead and wanting to secure her clutch. Nothing is ever simple with the Ahamkara and nothing is ever simple with the Vex; and now we're dealing with both. And somewhere in all of this, there is also a concerning involvement of the Black Garden that connects to both of these elements. At the end of it all, there's us, who rely on this specific combination of elements to get through the portal, pursue the Witness and save the universe.

Spreading the brain worms to the rest of y'all to think about. If you spot any other mission names, feel free to share, though I think that if they happen, they might happen in the coming weeks. Also as I mentioned before, I know there's been leaks and lore tabs unlocking early on Ishtar: I've not seen any leaks or cutscenes and have not read any lore tabs that aren't explicitly visible in-game so if there's a really simple answer in that leaked material, I don't know about it and don't want to know about it so please don't spoil to me or to others!

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the wish #season of the wish spoilers #ahamkara #vex #black garden #lore vibing #long post #it took me a few runs to notice the names in riven's lair ngl. i was not paying attention to that at all #it was a few runs in when i realised there's weird words as 'missions' and then remembered polysemy being the first separate one #and whenever there's words like this they're there for a reason. they weren't picked randomly #it's so interesting to try and decipher why the writers chose those in particular #if anyone has any other ideas for them feel free to speculate!#also getting the feeling that the vex are taking a crack at paracausality #therefore their interest in the ahamkara. perhaps even taking a crack at also following through the portal #whatever they're doing it can't be good. i'm going insane #if anything. it's setup for them being a big threat post-TFS

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 1 year

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Deterministic Chaos

"So all being is a one and only being; and that it continues to be when someone dies, tells you, that he did not cease to be." —Schrodinger's epitaph

He is fleeing the Vex across a verdant cliff He is standing guard on the CloudArk-Nexus border on Tramontane's orders He is sitting next to Nimbus on the watchtower ledge He is [In the Garden, of the Garden: both descriptions are approximately correct but technically inaccurate, in the same way you can say Schrodinger's cat is at once dead and alive. You and I are both and neither, in and of, extinct and perpetual. So, there isn't much point in] trying to find a way out of this daedal maze He is trying to make sense of what he's looking at He is trying to place the familiar voice echoing across the network [wondering what might have been if we had stayed in our familiar prism-prison or kept tightrope-walking across the quantum wilds. Instead, ask yourself] "Would you like to dance?" [is disincorporated immortality really so bad compared to the others' ends? Would you have preferred an attack by vitreous helicoprion or stumbling over the edge of unreality? Imagine] His foot crosses the quantum threshold before he's aware of it His grip slackens and his gun falls into a bed of red flowers His stomach churns with fear regret sudden doubt as to what [if we didn't have each other; at least we're not cut off, like the Sol Divisive are from the rest of the Vex. Nor are we beholden to another's purpose. They chose that lonelier path all for a chance to create not simulate, not remake in their image—something truly paracausal.]

he is witnessing: the birth of a god a false idol a reproduction that is both like the Veil and not at all built up by the same Vex who bowed down to it [Well, they tried to anyway. Either the blueprint was imperfect or the task impossible or both or neither, but their efforts fell short, so now they're stuck waiting for a resurrection]

He is racing for the door that is at once opening and closing He is coming around to the city council's decision to ignore the unknown threat He is reaching for an answer to Nimbus's question [they know will never come.]

"Do you think you'll have any regrets?"

[I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?]

He stares into the white-hot glow of a conflux, speculating on the secrets that lie within He squints down the barrel of his gun at a row of glowing red eyes advancing on his city He looks away from Nimbus's keen curious expression to reckon with his uncertain certainty before he says

[Of course. The same as everything else, everything that has been and is and will be. And what will become of us then?]

"I don't know."

Nimbus: Since before history, there's been this raging river. Some try to divert the river. Others try to build a dam.

A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure). Waves slam through the gap and where they hit the stone they throw up pillars of spray that pierce the mist and crash down in thunder. There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard.

But nothing stops it.

Lots of people have believed that we either sink in the water,

or learn to swim.

Osiris: Don't we?

Nimbus: See, that's the real wild part. We are the river.

Ghost Fragment: Vex

ESI: Maya, I need your help. I don't know how to fix this.

SUNDARESH: What is it? Chioma. Sit. Tell me.

ESI: I've figured out what's happening inside the specimen.

SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That's incredible! You must know what this means - ah, so. It's not good, or you'd be on my side of the desk. And it's not urgent, or you'd already have evacuated the site. Which means...

ESI: I have a working interface with the specimen's internal environment. I can see what it's thinking.

SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. The cognitive architectures are so -

ESI: No. I don't need any kind of epistemology bridge.

SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it's human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia?

ESI: I'm telling you it's full of humans. It's thinking about us.

SUNDARESH: About - oh no.

ESI: It's simulating us. Vividly. Elaborately. It's running a spectacularly high-fidelity model of a Collective research team studying a captive Vex entity.

SUNDARESH:...how deep does it go?

ESI: Right now the simulated Maya Sundaresh is meeting with the simulated Chioma Esi to discuss an unexpected problem.

[indistinct sounds]

SUNDARESH: There's no divergence? That's impossible. It doesn't have enough information.

ESI: It inferred. It works from what it sees and it infers the rest. I know that feels unlikely. But it obviously has capabilities we don't. It may have breached our shared virtual workspace...the neural links could have given it data...

SUNDARESH: The simulations have interiority? Subjectivity?

ESI: I can't know that until I look more closely. But they act like us.

SUNDARESH: We're inside it. By any reasonable philosophical standard, we are inside that Vex.

ESI: Unless you take a particularly ruthless approach to the problem of causal forks: yes. They are us.

SUNDARESH: Call a team meeting.

ESI: The other you has too.

ENTRY 12

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 15.9 C. Pulse 160 BPM, strong, unsteady. Limbic system registers extreme terror.

I died on the operating table. Not unexpected.

But when I woke, I was still on the table. My body still open.

It was almost perfectly dark. I perceived that I was surrounded by medical frames, all frozen mid—movement, their cutting and suction instruments whining at standby.

I could only see because of the light… from a single red eye.

The operation had gone terribly wrong.

Above the life—support collar on my neck, I was completely intact. Below that meridian, I had been separated into distinct braids of tangled flesh. My nerves made up one braid—my circulatory system another—my lymph nodes, my muscles, my naked bones… the glistening hulls of my extracellular matrix abandoned on the table like leftover turkey after Thanksgiving dinner. I had been picked clean and sorted. My head was the source of a gory river delta.

Yet all the organs were still working. I was alive, in disassembly.

CLARITY? I asked the darkness. I had no breath to speak, but I could still transmit with my sensorium. IS THAT YOU?

“No,” said the voice behind the red eye. “It’s me.”

Sundaresh.

Her voice was thoughtful, remote, and keenly terrific. Like the noise of an angle grinder held to my skull.

“Something like this happened to me. I was an explorer, once. One of… hundreds of myself. Then I fell into a… a trap, I think? And they drew me out of it with a hook, and turned me inside out to see how I worked, and then they made billions of me. All of us shouting at each other, shouting for Chioma, screaming for mother. They were looking for the right one. And when they found me, they killed all the others. I knew I was different, because the quiet made me happy. I was glad to be alone.”

VEX, I screamed at her. YOU’RE A VEX. YOU’RE NOT REAL AND YOU CAN’T HURT ME.

“Can’t I?” She grasped my spinal cord. A frame shadowed her motions, lifting the cord like a snake. “Of course I’m not a Vex. Is there “a” Vex? Is “Vex” something you can be, rather than something that you do? I don’t know. I don’t know why they sent me here. I don’t know if they do either. They just do things. Why do you think I’m here, Clovis?”

“To kill me,” I whispered. Without a heartbeat to waver, without lungs to seize and choke, could I even feel fear? I discovered that I could. “You’re an assassin…”

“No,” Sundaresh whispered. The red eye throbbed in time with her voice. “The Vex don’t act so directly. They didn’t know what you found here, but I discovered your secret— Clarity Control. And once I tell them, they will come for it.”

The red light made my blood on the surgical instruments appear black. I tried to signal Elisabeth. I think that in my panic, I even called her Elsie.

Sundaresh closed her fist around my spine. One thumbnail dug into a disc, probing for the nerve beneath. It felt like nothing I have ever—

Anti-emetic drip engaged.

“Take me to Clarity Control,” Sundaresh hissed. “Let me behold what you have found. Do that, Clovis, and I will let you live.”

“You aren’t real. You can’t hurt me.”

“Oh, Clovis.” One of the surgical frames extended a monofilament cutter, two inches of invisible wire, and reached into my nerves. Something sounded like scissors snipping. “I’m in these frames. I’m in your systems. I’m in your very bones, old man. Now take me to Clarity Control. Take me to the garden’s seed. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me—”

Elisabeth appeared. In her exobody, she moved too quickly for my dark—adjusted eyes to track. All I saw was a blur of violence and shattering frames. I blacked out. Elisabeth must have brought in clean frames to finish the operation, because when I awoke, I was whole again.

The new Elisabeth has no mouth or nose. She did not consider them necessary. She’ll see. But somehow, I could still see the wonder in her eyes as she leaned over me.

“You’re my grandfather,” she seemed to say. “Aren’t you?”

WARNING.

• Sustained high-level terror causes overactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. This can preface major immune, endocrine, and autonomic nervous dysfunctions.

• Beware of dissociation, loss of affection in close personal relationships, obsessive-compulsive behavior, sleep disruption, and reduced processing/learning capacity.

WARNING.

• Abnormal protein crystallization in cancellous bone matter. Unknown protein isoformations in marrow are driving buildup of crystallized arylcyclohexylamine NMDA antagonist. Potential psychogenic effects.

Ghost Fragment: Vex 2

SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it.

ESI: To the best of my understanding.

SHIM: Well I'll be a [profane] [profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel.

SUNDARESH: Yeah. We're in a difficult position.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?

ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.

SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.

ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -

SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

ESI: I didn't think of that.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound]

Ghost Fragment: Vex 3

SUNDARESH: I have a plan.

ESI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we're in Vex hell right now, there's nothing we can -

SHIM: Stop talking about 'real' and 'unreal.' All realities are programs executing laws. Subjectivity is all that matters.

SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up.

ESI: Your sim self is saying the same thing.

SUNDARESH: Chioma, love, please hush. It doesn't help.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Maybe the simulations are just billboards! Maybe they don't have interiority! It's bluffing!

SHIM: I wish someone would simulate you shutting up.

SUNDARESH: If we're sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we're real, we need to get outside that bubble.

ESI: ...we call for help.

SUNDARESH: That's right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind.

SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can't simulate. It's too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue - us.

DUANE-MCNIADH: If we try, won't the Vex torture us for eternity? Or just erase us?

SUNDARESH: It may simply erase us. But I feel that's preferable to...the alternatives.

ESI: I agree.

SHIM: Once we try to make the call, the Vex may...react. So let's all savor this last moment of stability.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct sounds]

SHIM: You two are adorable.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I wish I'd taken that job at Clovis.

Queen's Ransom

Variks: If Skolas thinks he is Kell of Prophecy, then weapons could turn the tale.

Variks: He just said, "I stole the gift of Freedom. Secrets of time and space. House of Wolves will stand forever."

Petra Venj: What? Guardian, there are dozens of new Wolf signatures, and the number keeps growing. It's the Vex tech! Skolas! He's pulling the entire House of Wolves through time!

Entropy's Pinnacle

Ikora: Good luck, Guardian. May your path through Darkness lead you to the Light.

Ghost: The roots of the Citadel go deep into the heart of the planet. The spire is the metal trunk of a very, very big tree. Sort of.

Ghost Fragment: Vex 4

Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. No human being in the Ishtar Academy has ever crossed the safety cordon and walked the ancient stone under the Citadel, the Vex construct that stabs up out of the world to injure space and time. It's not safe. The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yet— and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate. Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall.

But they walk together in proxy, pressed close, huddled in awe. Blue-green light, light the color of an ancient sea, washes over them. Each of their explorer bodies carries a slim computer. Inside, two hundred twenty-seven of copies of their own minds wait, patient and paused, for dispersal.

"I wonder where it came from," Duane-Mcniadh says. Of course he's the one to break the reverent silence. "The Citadel. I wonder if it was here before the Traveler changed Venus."

"It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow."

Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity."

Maya Sundaresh walks at the center of the group. She's been too quiet lately. What happened to them wasn't her fault and maybe she'll believe that soon. "What could you do with it?" she murmurs, staring up. "If you understood it?"

Chioma puts an arm around her. "That's what we're going to find out. Where the Citadel can send us. Whether we can come back."

"They're not us any more." Maya looks down at herself, at the cache of her self-forks. "We're not going anywhere. We're sending them. They're diverging."

They rescued themselves from the inside of a Vex mind, two hundred and twenty-seven copies of themselves, untortured and undamaged. Those copies voted, all unanimously, to be dispatched into the Vex information network as explorers.

When Maya and Chioma look at each other they can tell they're each wondering the same thing: how many of them will stay together, wherever they go? How many fork-Mayas and fork-Chiomas will fall out of love? How many will end up bereft, grieving? How many will be happy, like them?

Chioma tries a little smile. Maya smiles back, haltingly, and then, sighing, unable to stop herself, grins a big stupid grin, an everything-is-okay grin. Shim makes a loud obnoxious awwww at them. Duane-McNiadh is still thinking about paracausality, and doesn't notice.

They climb. When they find the Vex aperture they plan to use, they overlay the luminous stone and ancient brassy machines with images of sun and sand. They set up the transmitters and interfaces that will translate two hundred and twenty-seven simulations of the four of them into Vex language, into the tangled pathways of the Vex network, to see what's out there, and maybe come home.

In the metaphor they've chosen, setting up the equipment is like laying out the picnic. In the metaphor they've chosen they look like themselves, not hardened explorer proxies. Like people.

"Do you think," Duane-McNiadh begins, halting, "that you could use this place to change things? If you regretted something, could you find a way through the Citadel, go back, and change it?"

"I wish I could go back and change you into someone else," Dr. Shim grouses. Chioma's shaking her head. She knows physics. "Time is self-consistent," she says. "I think it's like the story of the merchant and the alchemist. You could go back and watch something, or be part of something, but if you did, then that was the way it always happened."

"Maybe you could bring something back to now. Something you needed." Maya runs a hand across the surface of the Vex aperture, feeling it with sensors ten thousand times as precise as a human hand. These proxy bodies are limited— they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. "Or go forward and learn something vital. If you knew how to control it, how to navigate across space and time."

"So it's just a way to make everything more complicated." Duane-McNiadh sighs. "It doesn't fix anything. Nothing ever does! I should've taken that job at— "

"You would've hated it at Clovis," Dr. Shim says. "We both know you're happier here." Duane-McNiadh stands stunned by this courtesy, and then they both pretend to ignore each other.

The four of them set up the interface. Their stored copies wake up and prepare for the journey, so that as they work they find themselves surrounded by the mental phantasms of themselves: two hundred and twenty-seven Mayas and Chiomas knocking helmets and smiling, two hundred and twenty-seven Dr. Shims making cynical bets with each other about how long they'll last, two hundred and twenty-seven Duane-McNiadhs blowing goodbye kisses to the sweet golden sun, two hundred and twenty-seven of them shaking hands, smiling, making ready to explore.

Ghost Fragment: Old Russia 3

General Chen Lanshu is flying her glider. She carves around the huge bulb nose of a colony ship, one of the Cosmodrome’s towering children. Her eyes see temperature: she surfs the winter air rolling down off the cryo-chilled fuel tank. Turbulence rattles her bones. “General,” Malahayati sends. “You’re making Rasputin nervous.” “Am I?” Lanshu banks, grinning, spiraling around the fuel tank. The machine hates risk. Risk to the General, sure, but also risk to Rasputin’s ships. “Is that the word he used, exactly?” “He can be very charming,” the submind assures her. Malahayati works with Chen Lanshu, and she is certainly charming, but this is Rasputin’s territory, Rasputin the tacit king, the brooding wary first-among-equals. Yesterday Lanshu spoke to a colony ship AI and it called Rasputin ‘the Tyrant.’ Not without affection. And certainly not without respect. “He can charm me in person,” Lanshu suggests. “He’s very private, lately.” “Then he can sulk.” She spreads her arms and legs and climbs a thermal, whirling up, arrowing off the top and out away from the colony ships towards the defensive wall. Her glider’s a second skin, whipcrack-taut paramuscle, like a flying fox. The Cosmodrome races past beneath her. She waggles her wings at a cloud of passing sensor mites: a saucy hello. Two of the security division’s MBTs drill in the mothyards. “I don’t understand why you came,” Malahayati says. She’s probably lying. Malahayati understands Lanshu very, very well. “I don’t understand why you masked yourself yesterday, during the launch.” The launch. SABER GREEN. Rasputin quietly moving another doomsday weapon into Earth orbit. And all the other launches, too, not just weapons but people, the colonization schedule pushed up... as if the need to disperse is now imperative. General Chen Lanshu banks out across the Wall. Look at all that beauty! Look at the highway rolling off across green hills and grey mountains. Imagine, now, imagine if she just landed and started walking, out away from everything, into the wilderness... “Imagine something going wrong,” she says. “Imagine this road choked with corpses. Imagine the security team gunning down refugees as they try to force their way onto the ships. Imagine cars from here to the horizon— ” those stupid old-fashioned cars everyone still owns, because the strange uneven advancement of this post-Traveler world leaves some things unchanged. “You expect violence?” Malahayati says, in that conciliatory, careful way of hers, her way of managing meat people. “Something beyond our capability to preempt or contain?” Expect? As a military professional? No, no. But— Once, when she was younger, sixty or seventy, Chen Lanshu pulled rank to get a look at the Never-Be installation in Taipei. She watched the images in the fresco and she felt... this foreboding, this enormous weight, a dread that refused to attach itself to any specific threat. And she felt it again, last year, when she was briefed on the project in Lhasa, the vision machine... She shivers. Her wings shudder and tremble in the airstream. “Isn’t that what we do, Mala?” she says. “Why we still have soldiers? Why we made you? Expectation.” The Traveler came out of nowhere. Entirely unanticipated. Imagine if it hadn’t been friendly. Imagine that. Rasputin surely has.

Ghost Fragment: Vex 5

RECORD 0-CHASM-0

My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology.

As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know: let’s run that one more time.

What I’m doing here in Lhasa isn’t science. It’s unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you’d be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn’t far enough to forget a day like that.

But I believe it’s important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.

RECORD 0-CHASM-01

Trial one. Subject one.

It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I...

[silence: 0:08]

I missed you. We hadn’t been apart for more than a year since we met. I’m not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion’s work and all Hyperion’s distance keeping you from me. And I act like it’s not enough.

We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time.

The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can’t send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I —

I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore.

I just wanted to send my love.

RECORD 0-CHASM-02

Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experience inside.

We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev’s experience left no physical damage.

After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible.

He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point.

RECORD 0-CHASM-03

We’ve decided not to abort. It’s insane, isn’t it? There are pressures on us I can’t tell you about until I see you again.

The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably.

Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us.

I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.

RECORD 0-CHASM-09

Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn’t. He says it’s getting better — he feels that we’ve had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand.

I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love.

We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.

RECORD 0-CHASM-31

Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future.

He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific.

We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil.

I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.

RECORD 0-CHASM-52

I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me — not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh.

You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it’s been so long. We’ve come so far. Do you ever want to go home?

And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home.

I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log.

Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.

Ghost Scan: The Rig, Titan, #2

Ghost: Shipping manifestos. Hm. Looks like they traded frequently with a settlement… wow. Way out there. It's called… Hyperion. Huh."

Winterbite

Don't slip or you'll hurt yourself. A lot.

NEOMUNA HISTORICAL ARCHIVE

ARTIFACT REF X0003; EXO-IND4b0082.log 090260163

TYPE: bridge audio recorder

PARTIES: M. Sundaresh [IC-3612], C. Esi [IC-3977], L. Tse [IC-6055], C. Sanchez [IC-5438], A. Murib (IC-xxxx)

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS…//

ESI: What was that?

MURIB: We got hit. Engine 7 is down.

SUNDARESH: We can't take another one of those! This is a colony ship!

ESI: Hard aport. Put Hyperion between us and that—

MURIB: Sir, the r—

ESI: And flood the EM spectrum with—

MURIB: CHIOMA! The round—the one that hit us—it's moving!

ESI: What?

SYSTEM WARNING//STRUCTURAL IMPACT

SUNDARESH: He's right. I'm reading… arms and legs? It's attacking engine 6.

SANCHEZ: I'll scramble a squad of Cloud Walkers. They can suit up and—

MURIB: The maneuvers I'm pulling'll fling them into space, even with mag boots.

TSE: Bringing point-defense cannons about.

ESI: It's only three meters across. Sure you can hit that without peeling us open?

SYSTEM WARNING//STRUCTURAL IMPACT

TSE: Kinda have to, Cap'n. Firing.

MURIB: Buset! That thing just took a fifteen-millimeter burst to the chest!

ESI: Again.

TSE: Firing. It's clear!

MURIB: Mostly. Looks like it left a… is that a spear through our bulkhead?

SUNDARESH: Not sure. It's some kind of exotic matter, spitting all my sensor pings back at me, amplified, like a…

ESI: We can figure it out later, dear. Sanchez, how's the ECM?

SANCHEZ: Not great. Whatever they're using to coordinate, it's not electromagnetic. Getting something weird, though.

MURIB: Weirder than the three-meter hitchhiker knocking on the hull?

SANCHEZ: Maybe. You remember those Vex signals you discovered?

SUNDARESH: On occasion, Carlo.

SANCHEZ: There's a big one! Recurring. Coming from the outer system. Think it's a distress signal.

ESI: Ignore it and get me—

SUNDARESH: No! Bring us back around into the moon's shadow!

ESI: Maya!

SUNDARESH: We need to break line of sight. I can feed that Vex signal into that thing skewering us—use it like an amplifier. It might trick these attackers into thinking we're a Vex ship.

MURIB: It's a tightbeam transmission. We'll have to ride it back to the source to keep that up. You sure you want to meet whatever makes a Vex cry for help?

ESI: Enemy of my enemy, Arief. We might just find a safe port in this storm.

Ghost Fragment: Dead Orbit

RECORD 978-ECLIPSE-4165

lo? Hello? Are you...oh, please, let it be alive. Wake up little Ghost, wake up. Just please give me some sign that you're listening.

All right. I don't need...I know you're listening. Why would you be out here if you weren't here to...It's a miracle I found you out here. On this thing.

I didn't know the Traveler sent its Ghosts out this far from home.

Poor little lost thing. Please wake up.

I am an Arach of Dead Orbit. I am the last of the crew of the Sophia. And this place is...it doesn't have a name. We called it A-113.

How long have you been here, little Ghost? Why did you come?

Listen. We came here on behalf of the Fleet. We were scavengers. Sixty-one days ago a Dead Orbit scout detected an unknown presence in stationary orbit about Ceres. 133 west. Looked Golden Age, by the signatures. Human. A small station. No prior records. We -

I suppose we should have disclosed it to the Tower, but we didn't. I didn't. That was my call. We wanted it for ourselves, whatever it was. For the Fleet. If we'd told the Tower, maybe they might have sent a Guardian not of our making instead...Doesn't matter now, does it, little one?

If I ramble it's because I haven't slept in seven days.

Seven point five days ago; that was when the Sophia dropped into the Belt. They saw us at once. We dropped and the alarms went off and that was the end, that was the end right then, but they let us go on for another seven-point-five days, didn't they? The alarms. Hostile scan detected. An Awoken ship had us in its sights, just a couple hundred kilometers away. Like it had been waiting for us. It could have wiped us out of space right then but instead it crippled our engines and our comms and then for days it played with us, like a cat, we limped half-way round the Belt and it was always there...

We abandoned the Sophia one-point-five days ago. We jumped ship for A-113.

I don't know what else to call it. I don't know what it was built for. There are these things, like keyholes. The rangefinders say they go on for thousands of kilometers. The others went inside and found - well, some of them are still screaming about the eye. All the other voices that come back are more terrible.

There's salvage here but it'll never come home, none of it. None of it except maybe you, little Ghost.

Wake up.

Wake up. Go home. Tell them to strike A-113 from the records. Tell them to forget the Sophia, and the mission, and her crew.

END RECORD

Final Warning

My Esteemed Colleagues,

While enjoying my afternoon cup of Psamathe Silver Tip (a gift from Dr. Dewan after his sabbatical—thank you again, dear friend) and ruminating on our planet's orbital corrections and the orbital corrections we ourselves make throughout our own lives, a completely unrelated revelation came to me.

I realized, often in times of rest, how my mind wanders its own furthermost reaches, and how the answers to my most vexing questions present themselves at that time with absolutely no fanfare. (This phenomenon is worth studying in its own right by people much smarter than I, but I digress.) My most recent revelation comes in regard to our current pursuits with Atmospheric Spectrometer #003a, a.k.a. Final Warning, as I have heard it being called around the lab.

The odd capabilities this "Final Warning" harbors have long been suspected by Dr. Sundaresh to be a byproduct of the Veil, replicating energy signatures we most often observe in fluid dynamics. With that in mind, I propose we begin testing the ability to engage that energy using both the Magnus and gyroscopic effects. We attempt to create a "paracausal skipping stone," if you will.

How we accomplish this remains to be seen, but I encourage you to not spend the next few days thinking about it, as we will discuss it at the next staff meeting.

Enjoy your weekends,

Dr. Esi

Let me tell you a secret. If you ever want to see what's been watching you since the very beginning, just stand on that line, and look... up. [KEEP LOOKING. HIGHER|FURTHER|DEEPER. DIVE.]