"Wait a moment... doesn't it mean that those tech-worshipping weirdoes are basically worshipping Xenos Technology?"
As expected, Esdeath caught on pretty fast as we were walking through abandoned corridors, with occasionally flickering lights that were malfunctioning, as the entire place looked like a horror book.
The Cult Mechanicus believes knowledge to be the manifestation of divinity and holds that anything embodying or containing knowledge is holy because of it. The supreme object of devotion is therefore the omniscient Machine God, also known as the Deus Mechanicus or, in its embodied form, as the God-Emperor, the Omnissiah, an eminent and omnipotent spirit governing all machinery and knowledge in the universe.
The ultimate goal of the Cult Mechanicus is to understand and fully comprehend the glory of the Omnissiah. The communal and personal attempt at this form of enlightenment is known as the Quest for Knowledge. The Cult believes that all knowledge already exists in the universe, and it is primarily a matter of time before it can be gathered together to complete the Quest.
Obviously, this belief also includes a strict ban on the usage of the Xenos Technology or anything that wasn't of human origin, because these Technologies were unveiled and not intended for humanity by the Machine God.
I couldn't really understand and would probably never understand how such bullshit could have been born on Mars.
Mars...
The cradle of technologies and all scientific advancement in the Terran Federation.
"It's really funny, don't you think? Even the concept of the STCs was actually made possible because we too technology of some extinct civilization and incorporated it into our own tree."
The Terran Federation was exceptionally good at discovering, reverse-egineering and incorporating different technologies into our own technological tree. How else did our technological tree manage to grow so fast and advance that we were able to fight one-on-one against the Aeldari Empire?
It was through this...
Assimilation and incorporation.
One could say that approxiamtely 60% of the technologies used by humanity during the age of the Terran Federation originated from Xenos, one way or another. And when it came to the core technologies, this number would be around 85% beucase almsot everything came from some more advanced species.
We just reverse-engineered it and took it as our own.
Over time, the technologies that were taken from the other species were re-adjusted more and more, until they were thoroughly incorporated into humanity's technological tree.
"And that was how the Federation got to where it was... we knew that competing with the Aeldari in technological development was sheer stupidity because they had more than sixty million years for their development. So we sought another way... that would shorten the gap between the Empire and Federation."
I said as we finally entered the huge sealed room, where both of us stood in front of the huge vault doors, as I started typing something into Holo Brain and connecting to the console that was adjacent to the doors.
Uploading the Architect's sub-program into the next segment of the system architecture needed to be done manually. As many of the systems have collapsed, now what was once one entity was divided into several segments of the systems that were maintaining the entire facility.
And unfortunately, because of this, I needed to upload the Architect's sub-program into each new "Segment System" manually through some console or anything, as the Segment Systems were no longer connected with each other.
Nevertheless, we managed to open the next part of the facility and enter the elevator that was still working, much to my delight. I knew of the other paths that were leading to the core of the Araneus Research Facility, but none of them were direct and fast enough for our usage.
"Right now, we are heading to the core of the facility, and it's highly possible that some of the Anti-Psyker Knight Mechs are already waiting for us, and I have a hunch that they won't be really friendly."
I stated because after the Cybernetic Revolt, the Humanity grew pretty wary of anything related to the Artificial Intelligence, but not to the point of completely abandoning the concept because that would mean the destruction of our civilization.
The Men of Iron... these powerful and fully autonomous intelligent robots intended for both labour and combat won many wars for Humanity, but they turned against their masters at the end of the Age of Technology, sometime in the late 23rd Millennium, and unleashed a terrible war upon the Human worlds.
During this terrible conflict, remembered only as the "Cybernetic Revolt", both sides unleashed fearsome weapons of advanced technology.
The Cybernetic Revolt was eventually won by an alliance of galactic powers, some of whom may not have been Human, but at a terrible cost. The damage to interstellar Human society was catastrophic and shattered much of Humanity's hard-won economic strength and political unity, and laid the foundation for the later collapse caused by the onset of the Age of Strife.
Since the Cybernetic Revolt, the entire concept of the Men of Iron was scrapped, and humanity was very careful about the usage and research of the Artificial Intelligences...
Unfortunately, we were not capable of stopping it compeltely, because the very concept of the advanced Artificial Intelligence was deeply ingrained in every aspect of human society and on every single Federal Planet.
For humanity, it was just impossible to stop using the Artificial Intelligences... and in some cases even the Men of Iron.
And this was also the case of the Araneus Continuity.
"Perhaps if not for the Cybernetic Revolt, the fate of the Terran Federation would have been vastly different... but that is now history, and we can only speculate about it."
I said with certain sadness, because this was my reality for many centuries in my life of Jeron Egan Butler.
The aftermath of the Cybernetic Revolt was something that was deeply felt in the Federation, even after centuries had passed since it had ended, and the wounds never healed.